And that is just how she felt,
while at the same time feeling
generally sad about her trip to
the tropics. Glen would have
none of this. “Your dress was
divine, and you have nothing
to do with the heat.” Which
had her thinking about her
father, who’d say, despite
the fact that he’d grown
up in Minneapolis and
was a Southern trans
plant, “If you can’t
stand the heat,
get out of the
kitchen!”
Kitchens are
universally warm,
when in use, thought
Charlie, to himself, as he
lay alone in his bed, a bed
in which he’d been lying alone
most every night now for some
two decades. He’d been thinking
of Geraldine and Glen and their fateful
evening. And he was parched. He’d gone
through this over and over in his head
in the past six years. The anniversary
of the tragic event was coming up the
next day, which he knew, he could
never seem to un-know. And the
event was something, impending
anniversary or no, that he’d
dwelt upon, had used way
too much of his headspace
mulling over, ever since.
Mainly, he wondered
about the reference
to the South. The
hot kitchen quote,
he knew, was
widely attrib
uted to Pres
ident Harry S.
Truman from
way back in
1942, when
he was still
a state senator
in, of all places, Idaho.
He’d never once been to
Idaho (though a sweet lady
with whom he’d had the pleasure
of taking out to the movies a few times
back in his early 20s had moved to Coeur
d’Alene, although she’d done this without
letting him know until she was there, in a
rather spare letter that had a commemorative
stamp emblazoned with the portrait of Lyndon B.
Johnson, sometime when Charlie was, well, in his
early 20s), but he’d always had the distinct impression
that it was not a place known for its heat. Kitchens,
however, were, he supposed, potentially, when in
some use, rather universally warm, at the very
least. He wondered if these assumptions of his
were in any way unduly biased and decided
that, in the grand scheme of things, it
really didn’t matter. But that was
Charlie for you. Always dismissing
any thoughts that required further
layers of contemplation or that,
when stuck in his head for a
moment seemed to come to
a fork or split or wall that
indicated that to think
further on the subject
would require a tad
more complexity
than he was
willing to
give it. And
so his thoughts
went back to the
actual tragedy, that
moment on that fateful
night that had no inherent
complexity, was as straightforward
as such things go, was just a one-lane
road that he could putter upon with whatever
speed he desired as long as he wanted, meeting
no traffic whatsoever, hardly even a curve in the
road, with the horizon lit in some way or another
by a rising or falling sun, or a bold and heavy moon
that he generally could not see but that would be
impossible not to be in some small way continually
aware of, or else by rows of streetlamps which he’d
pass at an always steady rate, which, when he had
the passenger window next to which there’d never
once be a passenger) open even the slightest bit,
he’d hear a steady whump! (pause) whump!
(pause) whump! each time he passed one,
while his shadow, and this was something
he didn’t really consciously notice, would
move quickly from the dashboard in
front of him to the back seat, and
consistently, and with ever-
increasing speeds, move
nearer to him until
whump! back it
was at the
dashboard
again.
Then...
