Oberon's Page

By Gary Cottle

Oberon’s Page is the story of a man who never wanted to be a hero or an outlaw. Chris Richman likes to lie low and blend in. He has a tendency to wear masks—schoolteacher, husband, father. He has led a conventional, respectable life, but Chris Richman isn’t who he pretends to be, and when he meets a beautiful young man named Ethan, he discovers that his heart is still capable of longing. When Ethan reveals he is in trouble and needs Chris’s help, Chris must decide if he is willing to face the risk of scorn, ridicule and prison in order to rescue his beloved Ethan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gary Cottle
• Release date: Apr 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310063657

Gary Cottle

Gary Cottle came into existence in the mid ‘60s in the state of West Virginia. He spent most of his life there appreciating the natural beauty of the landscape and avoiding the locals. Gary Cottle now resides in Merced, California, a town close to San Francisco and Yosemite National Park but, sadly, bears little resemblance to either. Gary Cottle is an exceptionally shy gay man and keeps to himself mostly. He has several dear friends and stays in contact with them through social media. Gary Cottle appreciates movies, novels, art, photography, forests, trees and cabins in the woods. Please look for the following forthcoming novels: The Raven’s Sepulcher A teenage girl is sent to live with her grandmother in a secluded colonial farmhouse in New England. After finding a chapel in the attic and a mysterious old cemetery behind the house, she learns that her family is connected to a secret and ancient cult, and she must decide if she will accept the barbaric practices and beliefs of this cult or risk her life by declaring her independence from her family. My High School Boyfriend In 1983, Glen Farris, a poor teenager who was bullied at school and ignored at home, believed he was destined to lead a life of loneliness and solitude until Shannon Dupree, a handsome and stylish young man from the city, moved into the abandoned house next door. Shannon lived alone because his recently divorced mother liked to travel, and the rambling old mansion near the ghost town of Thurmond, West Virginia, built with coal money by Shannon’s great grandfather, provided a refuge, a place where the boys could relax and not worry about those who would judge them. They became close during the summer between their junior and senior years of high school, and in the fall, they became boyfriends. They planned to run away together after graduation, but their dreams were almost destroyed when Glen’s father, a fundamentalist preacher, discovered they were more than friends.

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Acknowledgements

Several friends took the time to read early drafts of this novel, and they freely offered their encouragement and support. I greatly appreciate them. Special thanks to my dear friends Dagi and Shasta who were meticulous proofreaders. They caught dozens of mistakes. I could not have managed without them. Dagi was especially enthusiastic about this story, and she helped me believe in it and my ability to tell it. I am grateful for her devotion.

Chapter 1

Commencement is a beginning. It may mark the end of schooldays and childhood, but it is, by and large, a commemoration of the start of adult life, that long anticipated moment when we can finally chart our own course. It's a commencement of freedom. It's a good thing. He kept telling himself this as he looked for a place to sit among the faculty. He had to tell himself this every year. Commencement is a beginning. This would be his eighteenth commencement, and he had said the same thing to himself every time. Commencement is a beginning. It's a good thing.

He scanned the crowd looking for Roger, although he knew he wouldn't sit with him even if he did spot him. Roger was bringing his wife, Beck, and she didn't like him. She didn't trust him, didn't think he was completely on the level...or something. Who knew exactly what she thought? Even Roger was kind of vague about it. But it didn't matter because it all amounted to the same thing: disapproval. That was something so biting it could not be tolerated. Disapproval was shaming and humiliating. He could never stand to face disapproval head on.

Mr. Richman, won't you sit with us? asked Mrs. Forbes, one of his fellow English teachers.

When he looked at her, he recognized, almost immediately, her mint green double knit polyester pantsuit. It was what she wore to the graduation ceremony the year before. The pantsuit stuck in his memory because it was similar to those worn by his third grade teacher more than three decades earlier.

Thank you.

He settled into the empty seat on her right—at least it was an aisle seat—and nodded hello to Mrs. Fletcher and Mrs. Hobbes, two more English teachers who were sitting on Mrs. Forbes's left. After politely nodding in turn, the three elderly women resumed their conversation without making any effort to include him.

Like Beck, Roger's wife, they didn't care for him much, didn't appreciate the fact that he refused to stick with the recommended classics throughout the year, and, sin of all sins, he wasn't known to be a stickler for correct grammar. Protecting the language from anarchy, mostly by redressing bad grammar, and introducing students to great examples of literature, wasn't that the job of an English teacher? That's what they believed. He, on the other hand, felt it was helpful to meet his students halfway, start with stories that they were likely to relate to immediately—Anne Rice, Stephen King, science fiction, comic books, anything. And he tried to be open to the more imaginative youthful innovations of language, so long as he grasped their meaning. If you rejected everything a kid said or liked out of hand, that kid was apt to reject you. When he made this argument to these ladies, both individually and collectively, enigmatic, wan smiles would appear on their faces as if they suddenly realized they were talking to someone from another planet, and they'd drop the subject as if they had accepted his point, only to object again at a later date.

He looked behind him into the faces of the crowd, and finally he saw Roger—a former jock with an expanding middle. When they made eye contact, they both smirked in mock derision of their plight, at having to sit through yet another one of these ceremonies, the old crones in their department, this decaying old auditorium, circa 1955, lack of funding, inadequate remuneration—all the old gripes and bugbears. Roger, it seemed, enjoyed the conspiratorial litany as much as he did—us against the bastards—but when his gaze shifted slightly, he saw Beck—the perky, blond, petite wife—there beside Roger, and the esprit de corps was broken. He then turned his focus to the stage, which was framed by heavy, aged crimson velvet drapes that matched the upholstery of the auditorium seats—all that old material polluted the air with a strange musty odor. The ceremony was about to get underway.

Commencements were hard for him. He worried about what was out there waiting for his students. Had he adequately prepared them? Were they truly ready? He was still a fairly novice teacher as compared to the old crones, but he had been at it long enough to know that he couldn't predict what would happen to a student out in the so-called real world. Many of the brightest students ended up on welfare, in bad marriages, dead-end jobs. Some, a few anyway, who hadn't done so well in school actually made a go of it as if school had held them back, and they needed to get out of the hothouse environment to bloom. Some of the kids he had seen pass through Essex High had died an early death...either by way of natural causes or by accident. Most of them by accident. Most of them died because of an accident. Several hadn't even made it to their graduation.

Jenny was supposed to be with him. She didn't usually attend commencement, didn't do much of anything with him, not anymore, but this ceremony was supposed to be special. However, at the last minute, she chickened out. She just couldn't deal with it. He didn't blame her, not this time. He could hardly deal with it himself, but he wanted to show his support to several of his students, the ones he had gotten to, the ones who started putting forth an effort after he had taken them aside for personal encouragement. Not coming would have been disloyal to these precious few.

But God, how he wished Jenny had come. Now that he was here, he didn't think he could get through it alone. Not with the old crones sitting there beside him. Not with Roger sitting four rows back with Beck at his side. When Mr. Davies, Essex High's principal—a genial, stubby, bald man who almost always wore exceptionally wide ties—stepped up to the podium and tapped the microphone, a palpable chill ran down his spine as if dancing insects had crawled under his clothes and were challenging his will, his courage to sit in that ratty old seat to the end. Commencement is a beginning. It's not just the end of school and childhood. It's a beginning, a good thing. ...most of them died in accidents. It was an accident.

He thought of getting up then, of making a slightly embarrassing exit right there at the start, but he held on, mostly because he wanted to avoid the questioning looks, the disapproving gapes, the shushing and the clucking of censuring tongues. Thankfully, he did begin to relax once Mr. Davies got on with his banal and reassuringly familiar oratory—the old boy basically delivered the same address every year. Maybe he could do this after all.

There were five speeches in all, and he sat quietly through the first one, and then the second, and eventually, they began to drone on like a metronome. For that, he was grateful. Commencement ceremonies were generally more self-important than weddings, even funerals, and there was something comforting in the tired old solemnity and heavy-handedness. He tuned the speeches out and started to daydream. He thought of his old dog Yeti, a great big white mutt saved from the pound. She loved to play fetch, and she was willing to go on retrieving balls, old shoes, Frisbees, or just about anything she could carry in her mouth, for hours it seemed—thus testing her own endurance as well as that of her master's—and she loved it most of all when he played the game with her by water, especially up at the lake. He'd toss a stick into the lapping waves, and she'd plunge in after it. She'd shake like crazy every single time she came back to shore, sending pelting droplets in all directions even though she must have known she was going right back in. Yeti was his best and most reliable friend as a kid. He hadn't thought of her in a long time. Why did she come to mind now, all of a sudden? He assumed it was just one of those mysterious quirks of the mind.

Once the roll call began, he sat up straight in his chair, determined to be there in spirit as well as body. A couple of years before, someone came up with the bright idea of calling out the graduates in random order, but in practice, no one seemed to like that. Most everyone wanted to know when their name was going to be called no matter how long they had to wait or how undemocratic their placement on the roster happened to be. Both Andersons and Willsons wanted certainty. So every year since, including this one, they got their certainty. It was all doggedly alphabetical. The students were even seated in the front rows of the auditorium in alphabetical order so that they could make their way onto the stage and back in a tidy fashion. According to the program simply titled Class of 2005, which he had picked up out in the hall, about a hundred would be graduating, and after scanning the list of names on the back, he determined that roughly half had been in one of his classes at one time or another. Out of those, there were about three, maybe four or five at best, who had pulled up their grades and stayed out of trouble after he gave them some extra attention, the ol' Richman song and dance. He was determined to pay attention for their sake.

He pricked up his ears when Mr. Davies began reading the names aloud. One by one, the graduates stood, walked up on the stage at the right, walked over to the podium—causing the battle-worn hardwood floors to creak underfoot—shook the hand of Mr. Davies, accepted their diploma, walked to the steps at the left and returned to their seat. Some of the faces were more familiar than others, but he had seen them all—in the halls, in the lunchroom, at dances, if not in class. Many hadn't changed all that much in four years. Others had gone through dramatic transformations; fourteen-year-old children had become young men and women. Some were shy about being in front of everyone, while others mugged for the crowd and gave thumbs up signs before they left the stage. Nearly all had their picture taken by a dutiful parent right at the moment they accepted their prize. Commencement ceremonies never change even though the members of the graduating class always feel like they're at a turning point in history.

It was all going off without a hitch. But then Mr. Davies got to the M's. Michelle McClerry. Curtis Maddox. Lorenzo Malay. And when Mr. Davies called out Brian Massey, an unusual stillness fell across the auditorium. Then there were a couple of giggles, a spiteful hiss, and finally a few claps. Mr. Massey had been one of those invisible kids, not standing out or making himself known in any way. Brian didn't play sports, didn't make perfect grades and didn't make awful grades either. Brian was quiet without appearing to be socially awkward. Everyone just overlooked him. But Brian's prominence had risen when he went to his senior prom a couple of weeks earlier. His official date was a girl who had eaten lunch with him since their freshman year. Another girl who was usually with them during the lunch period came with a handsome black twenty-three-year-old Marine. The fact that this young serviceman was a grown man, long out of high school, was scandal enough, but after it was revealed that the four had succeeded in a daring conspiracy, their local fame, or infamy depending on one's point of view, grew exponentially, especially Brian's. After Brian and the Marine danced a slow dance together, and then walked back hand in hand to where the girls were sitting, everyone present knew that the Marine was really Brian's date. By the following Monday, it was all over school. Such a stunt had been pulled before, but no one would have thought Brian had it in him.

He and Jenny usually served as chaperones at the senior prom, but doing it this year would have been too much to ask, so no one did. However, watching the young man with the Mona Lisa smile take his diploma and pass into the annals of Essex High made him wish he had been there. He would have liked to have seen Brian Massey make his stand.

Mr. Davies didn't miss a step. He went right on through the rest of the M's, and then onto the N's and O's. Beth O'Neal. Samantha Oxley. As Mr. Davies did this, Mr. Richman felt a tightening in his chest, a growing unease. When Mr. Davies got to the R's, he knew he had made a mistake. Melissa Richardson. Ross Rider. It was then that he sprang to his feet. Commencement is a beginning. One name had been conspicuously skipped. It's not just the end of schooldays and childhood. One name hadn't been called. It's the beginning of adult life. And he couldn't bear the drumbeat after that. Commencement is a beginning. It's a good thing. His throat was in danger of closing off. His heart was in danger of stopping. And those goddamned insects were playing their games on his spine once more. He had to get out of there. It was an accident.

There were startled looks and a couple of muffled gasps, but no matter, he had to go. Commencement is a good thing. Mrs. Forbes turned in his direction, and at first, she frowned in the same way she must have done when one of her students handed in unexpectedly slipshod work. It is a good thing. But when she looked into his face, her lips slid into a neutral slit and sympathy filled her eyes. It was an accident. Now he had to run. He saw Roger begin to rise from his chair and then slump down again when Beck put a hand on his arm. He went fast to the back of the house. It's a good thing. He stopped looking at the countenance of the bemused parents and teachers. He went right for the door. It's a good thing. An underclassman, a young lady playing the role of usherette, opened one of the swinging double doors when he drew near, and when he was on the other side, she allowed the door to swing shut. It closed with a thud. Suddenly he was alone in the hall. It's a good...

He doubled over thinking surely he'd be sick. But he didn't get sick. His throat opened, and he loudly sucked in the relatively cool air of the hall. He thought he might faint, but he kept on breathing, breathing deeply, pulling needed oxygen down into the bottom of his lungs. The hall was silent and empty. He was by himself. He heard only the muffled sound of Mr. Davies behind him and the collective shifts, sighs, and murmurs of those living souls in the auditorium.

When he stood, he saw a poster on an easel right there by the door. How could he have missed it coming in? In large black letters at the top were the words In Memoriam, and under these words were two pictures. One was of a girl who committed suicide last September, and beside her was a picture of a boy. The boy's image cut him to the very core. He had been thinking of the boy all day. Even when he was trying not to think of the boy, the boy was there. He had been dealing with it ever since he got up that morning, trying his best to get by, but he had not expected to come face to face with this boy's picture, this young man who would never age, never grow old. Under the picture was the name, his name: Christopher Warren Richman, Jr.

Chris thought that maybe a quick trip to the restroom was in order, but the teachers' lounge, along with its secluded restrooms, was upstairs, and that way was barred as it always was when school wasn't in session. He meticulously avoided using the boys' restrooms, and the habit was so ingrained that he went on avoiding them even during special events such as this one. So he headed for his car, thankful nobody was there to question his actions or to offer words of condolence. He and Jenny had endured enough of that—those self-conscious hugs, pats on the back and soft-hearted utterances—two years before. Now was not the time for their return. Chris needed to get out to his car before anyone crossed his path, so his pace quickened, becoming a run.

He made it to his reliable Toyota, a pewter-colored Camry, without incident. The sun was low on the horizon. It had been a beautiful spring afternoon, and it was giving way to a splendid evening. The perfect day for a commencement ceremony. He got in his car and locked the door behind him. Just when he heard the door latch, he let out a howl, a deep rattling howl that reverberated throughout his entire body. And he kept howling...and sobbing. Thick ropes of mucus ran out of his nose. Eventually, he could taste it in his mouth, but he kept howling. The idea that he was so loud that they could hear him back in the auditorium crossed his mind, but as soon as he was conscious of the idea, he dismissed it. He kept howling. Chris had grieved for his son openly for a long time after the accident. It was an accident. He had not held back anything. He had wept in front of people, even in front of his students, on more than one occasion. And after tears were no longer at the ready, he was still slow to smile or laugh for months. But as he roared inside the confines of his car, he realized his grief had not reached its zenith until that moment. It wasn't until this instant that he finally knew with his whole being that his son was dead.

Before Christopher's death, Chris had dreaded and looked forward to this commencement almost from the day Jenny informed him they were to be parents. He had rehearsed a little speech in his head that he had planned to deliver to his son after the ceremony, before he went out with his friends. He wanted to tell the boy that he loved him, was proud of him. He wanted to tell the boy that he and his mother would be there for him always, for advice and support, and that the boy could always count on them. He imagined Jenny there nodding in agreement to all of this as bittersweet tears rolled down her cheeks. He'd tell his son that he was a man now and must take responsibility for his actions. He'd put his arms around the boy for a quick hug, and then, finally, let the boy go to his much deserved celebration, knowing he'd be all right because the boy had the stuff; he had the makings of a good, dependable man.

But while Chris was sitting there in his car, his face drenched in moisture, he could feel those words drain from his mind, along with all their accompanying hopes and dreams. It wasn't just a psychological experience but a physical one, too. The catharsis was like a rip, a laceration, and then part of him was no longer there. It was like an amputation. He was not a father anymore. He didn't have a son anymore. So he howled, and mourned and let the heavens know how much he had been hurt.

Eventually, the howls became cries, and then they became whimpers. When he saw people begin to exit the school and head toward the parking lot, Chris started the engine. That's when a notion came to him; he needed to find Jenny. He needed to share this with Jenny. Maybe if they came together at a time like this, something between them could be saved. Maybe they could endure after all...even without their son binding them together.

Chapter 2

There was a time when the town of Essex was a place unto itself. Like other small villages out in the country, it was self-contained and self-sufficient. Even now there were vestiges of its bucolic, independent past. At one end of town, there was a row of stately houses, mostly neoclassical, and a little farther down Main Street was the community's business center, the town's heart, and after that, there was a small park. The layout was much like that of a thousand other small hamlets. Most of the structures in the original part of town were old. Most of the old storefronts still bore the names of some of the founding families of Essex: Harrison, Redding, Johnson. It was as if these people thought that by etching their names onto the tops of these commercial edifices, huddled together in this outpost of civilization, they meant to claim this little corner of the globe for their posterity as well as for themselves, but the descendants of the founders of Essex had long since been scattered to the wind. Who knows where they ended up? Like everyone else in America, they had moved on, and urban sprawl had brought the city, New York City, to the town's threshold so that now one need only go a short distance in any direction before running into a seemingly endless striation of car lots, gas stations, strip malls, chain motels and fast food restaurants. It was a free market gala complete with flashy strings of colorful lights, cinder block buildings and asphalt—everything standing alone, indifferent to its neighbor, with the aggregate melding into a tedious sameness. The old farmsteads just beyond this mess had been subdivided to make way for ranch houses, condos and the occasional cluster of off-the-shelf, cookie-cutter mansions. And none of it was meant to be permanent. No one came to Essex to lay down roots anymore. It was a way station.

Chris and Jenny didn't want to live in the city, didn't want to raise their son there, and the schools beyond the suburbs and bedroom communities were too iffy, as were the employment opportunities, so one or the other of them found Essex—neither of them could now remember exactly who—and after perusing its real estate listings, they located a modest little house, and the couple moved in. They couldn't afford to live large in those days, not with only one salary coming in. Jenny was pregnant with their son before they even finished college, so Chris landed the job at Essex High in a hurry, and by the time the kid arrived, it was decided that Jenny would be a stay-at-home mom, at least for the first few years. Their temporary, modest home turned out to be their address for nearly seven years. By then, they had saved some money, and Jenny was working, so they bought one of those older houses at the end of Main Street, a beautiful place with a history...someone else's history.

Like everyone else in Essex, neither Jenny nor Chris had roots in the community. Nothing was holding them there, not any longer. That's what Chris was thinking as he drove through town in search of his wife. They could leave, make a new start somewhere else. Maybe they could even have another child. He could still feel the remnants of tears on his face, and the sense of loss was overpowering, but he knew he had just turned some kind of corner back there at the school. Maybe, after all this time, he was ready to start a new path, go in a new direction. And maybe, just maybe, Jenny was ready to come around, too, or at least think about it.

She'd be at work, so Chris drove on past the house they shared and went to the other end of Main Street to her place of business, which was the old station house. Not that she worked for the fire department. The station house wasn't used by the fire department anymore; they had moved to a new facility years ago. The barn-like structure, now branded with the name Richman's Antique Exchange, had been in existence there by the town park almost since the conception of Essex, and it had stood vacant for a long time; there was even talk of pulling it down, but Jenny thought it was a great place for her store. Jenny had come into some money after her father died. Their son was about five years old then, and since the boy was about to start school, she thought it was a good time to go into business for herself. So she used her inheritance and her training in art history to go into the antiques trade. For a year, she did nothing but travel and buy, stockpiling her finds in their house, garage and several rented storage units. She considered building a new showroom out on the highway, but then a better idea hit her. She checked around and found that the station house, an antique itself, could be had for next to nothing. The town was glad to be rid of it, and what better place for an antique shop than a nineteenth century fire station? It had plenty of room, it was in a great location, and those bay doors were convenient for getting the larger pieces in and out of the building.

Jenny loved the business, and she was pretty successful, too. Some even regularly came out from the city to see what Jenny might have on hand, both fellow dealers and private collectors alike. So maybe it would be difficult to persuade her to leave after all. But couldn't she open an antique shop anywhere? Well, maybe not in an old downtown fire station.

Perhaps moving right now wasn't really in the cards, but making a new start was the important thing. Bonding with his wife, sharing their grief, that was important. Chris knew they couldn't go on like they had been forever. They led totally separate lives. Of course, that was the case even before Christopher died. Christopher had been the glue that held them together for as long as Chris could remember. They were both devoted to the boy, and no matter how shaky things were between them, they were on common ground when they spoke to one another about their son. Since his death, they had little to talk about, but he was still keeping them from splitting up. To call it quits would be to let go of Christopher.

All of these thoughts, feelings, and ideas were flying at him in rapid succession. Chris had been like a zombie for two years, probably even longer. Shame, guilt, heartache and regret had been smoldering in him for a long time like the charred remains of trees and blackened earth after a forest fire, but that evening, the dam had broken, and suddenly, his mind was active. He tried to push most everything aside so that when he pulled up to the station house, he could focus on his original intent; he was going to share his grief with his wife. No one in the world had loved Christopher the way they had. They had him in common, even now. And with the sense of loss coming so acutely on him, all of a sudden, there was no one else Chris would rather be with. And he and Jenny had loved one another once, hadn't they? It hadn't all been a lie, had it? A misconception? A mistake? He had to believe that there was something worth salvaging. They had lost so much, so he had to find some glimmer of hope.

When Chris noticed Jerry's van, he sighed. Jerry Elton was Jenny's relatively new partner, and the one who most frequently went on scouting trips in recent days, so Chris hadn't counted on him being in town. Now he'd have to think of something to say to get Jenny alone. They'd both think it was unusual for Chris to show up unannounced. Chris anticipated the look of surprise on their faces.

Come to think of it, Jerry was another entanglement that would make it difficult to get Jenny out of Essex. Not that she really owed him anything, but they had been working as a team for several years. He came from New York, from one of the larger auction houses, showing up in Jenny's shop on a semiofficial visit. The two hit it off, and soon he had quit his more prestigious job in the city in favor of the one Jenny was offering in hopes of a greater share of the profits. They both seemed happy with the arrangement.

Since it was past business hours, and since he didn't want to start banging on the door, making his arrival all the more dramatic, Chris fumbled with his keys for a moment, fitting this one and that one in the lock, trying to get into the building by way of the side entrance as unobtrusively as possible. It took him a while because it had probably been more than a year since he had unlocked this door.

Once inside, he latched the door and turned to face the station house's cavernous bay. No one was around. Only the dusty, eclectic stash was before him—furnishings, lamps, carpets, china, a couple of pianos, and one relatively large tribute to the art of taxidermy, a stuffed grizzly that had allegedly come from a grand woodsy lodge built in the Canadian Rockies when the railroad went through. This place, and all its stuff, was like confronting the contents of someone's subconscious.

The dormitory was in the back of the building. It was now used as a storeroom, a kind of holding cell for things that were still in their crates. Jenny and her partner might be checking over some new arrivals back there, but there was another room off of the dormitory that Jenny and Jerry used as their office. Chris assumed they'd most likely be there. As he headed in that direction, he began to feel that same pressure, that same crescendo of tension that had attacked his nerves back at the commencement ceremony. He was sure he'd burst into tears again as soon as he saw Jenny, but rather than run from a potentially humiliating situation, he reminded himself of his goal. He needed the company of his wife, needed to reach out to her. It was foolish for them to go on suffering alone rather than leaning on one another for support.

When he got to the storeroom, he saw the light coming from the office, but his view was obstructed by the clutter—Jerry's new acquisitions no doubt. Nevertheless, Chris's pace quickened as soon as he saw the light. And then, almost immediately, he detected soft, quiet noises. Voices? Breath? Movement? A presumption jumped to his mind as to what was happening in the office, but he quickly dismissed it. That couldn't be right. Then he made out a few words in a truncated conversation. Someone sounding like Jerry said something about an alternative orifice in a schoolboy's smarmy tone, one Chris was all too familiar with being a school teacher. And then he more distinctly heard his wife, Jenny, say, Stop talking so much. Chris sucked in air and held it in his lungs as he made his way across the storeroom to the office. This day couldn't be real. Once he was there, his eyes confirmed the mental image his imagination had already concocted. Jenny's skirt was lying in a puddle around her ankles, her blouse was open, exposing her breasts, and she was bent over the desk, the oak partner's desk said to have been Henry Ford's, or had it been Cornelius Vanderbilt's?—one of the treasures Jenny couldn't sell. Jerry was completely nude except for dark dress socks, and he was standing directly behind Jenny, skin touching skin. There were papers on the desk and coffee dripping through the coffee maker, everything ordinary intermixed with this thing that was crazy, obscene, unthinkable.

Jerry was the first to realize Chris was there. He jumped back causing his bouncing, slimy erection to come into view. Chris gasped, finally letting go of the air he was holding in.

Jerry absurdly said, Oh, hello. Didn't hear you come in. And then he added meekly, Sorry, Chris.

Jenny, to Chris's amazement, didn't sound at all ashamed. On the contrary. She seemed annoyed when she asked, Why are you here?

Chris didn't respond. This day was out of control. He was used to time passing in a constant, meaningless trickle, so the deluge of events and revelations was too much. It was like being cornered in the ring and repeatedly pummeled in the face. There was only one thing he needed, wanted at that instant: a quick escape. Chris left before the lovers even had a chance to cover up.

He retraced his steps, made his way out of the building, got into his Toyota, turned over the engine and pulled away. He did it all without thinking, without knowing what he was doing. Chris felt insane. Maybe he was insane for a few minutes. But as he was driving, he thought of the graduates. They'd be out partying tonight, and many would be foolish enough to drive afterwards. He hoped they'd be safe and careful. So what example was he setting by rushing through town like a madman? Of course, most were still back at the school saying goodbye to friends, hugging proud relatives and getting their picture taken, so they couldn't see him or suffer the possible ill effects of his bad driving, but it was the principle of the thing. These fleeting thoughts brought him back to his senses. Driving recklessly was a bad thing—he knew that better than anybody—so Chris went on more slowly and deliberately to the old house at the end of Main Street.

Once there, he lumbered toward the door and went in. His feet and legs were heavy with a restless exhaustion. He half wanted to turn back around and go to Jenny, confront her in the heat of anger, but he was sure she'd come home soon enough. And in the meantime, he could catch his breath, collect his thoughts. On instinct, he headed toward the liquor cabinet in the living room. He needed a drink, he thought. Wasn't that what adults did when they were overwrought? But when he opened the cabinet door and placed his hand on the unopened bottle of Dewar's White Label scotch, he was overcome by sadness. He couldn't bear to touch a drop, not even now after all this time, no matter how helpful it may be. So he didn't have a drink. He didn't do anything. He just took off his jacket, slumped into a chair and