Page 18 - WTP VOl. X #3

Reunion (continued from preceding page)
They were lying in bed now, on the last night of the reunion, in his room at the inn. He checked his watch. It was too late to call Diane. They had talked briefly in the afternoon, and he’d promised to call again. He imagined her voice when he called her in the morning: tentative, curious, suspicious, worried, all of the above.
“Maybe he was just Charlie Lambert,” Patsy said. She got out of the bed, and he watched her getting dressed. The dark blue skirt, the gray sweater, and yes, she was wearing underwear these days. A black bra and panty set, the panties cut low under her belly, but no thong, which was fine.
He kissed her at the door, watched her walk down the corridor and stand in the glow of a hallway light while she waited for the elevator. He waved to her when the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. She waved back and stepped inside. All gone. They hadn’t exchanged phone numbers or email addresses. She had let him know she was on Facebook—“My actual name’s Patricia.” And left the rest understood. The important thing was not being any more stupid than he’d already been.
He returned to the bed and turned off the lamp on the side table. Gray light from the parking lot came through the window. He got back up and closed the second set of drapes, consigning the room to almost utter darkness; there was only a thin crack of gray light outlining the shape of the window. He lay in the bed and began planning what he would say to Diane in the morning. There’d be no chance of stopping by the house first; he’d just drive straight to the office, calling her on his cell. He needed a plausible excuse. How about, the whole town lost cell phone coverage, but at least the beer stayed cold? What would Es- ther recommend? He pictured her listening while he rehearsed his various explanations. Maybe she would just throw a potato at him.
He thought of Charlie Lambert and his last sight of him, Charlie standing in the pool of fluorescent light in the middle of the night, then stepping out of it. Sometimes, you stepped out of the light and you were never seen again. Maybe you found other pools of light to step into—that would be the happy ending, Holmes thought. Other times, once you stepped one way, you couldn’t step back. The light was gone. It had moved on.
Price is a retired newspaper reporter and editor living in Hornell, NY. His fiction has appeared in Threepenny Review and Artemis.
11
Deep Well
monoprint with flowers 15'' x 22''
By Britt Breeden