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þÿTreading Water

Michael B. Tager

    Normally, Bernard didn’t pay much attention to what people bought when he was ringing them up. He’d had in the beginning, curious, but all too soon they just became a line of miscellany. They weren’t even groceries anymore, just bar codes and plastic. Last week, when a carton of orange juice, frozen tater tots, a home pregnancy test and a dozen eggs rolled by, he didn’t even blink. Not until a pale, slender hand touched his. “Bernard?” Denise asked.
    Her hair was cut in a severe bob that didn’t suit her and her waist was a little thicker since graduation. Otherwise, she looked the same as she did at graduation the year before: a little mousey, a little forgettable. They weren’t close friends, but they’d known each other enough to say hello. Once, when they were sophomores, they’d shared a tipsy kiss during a game of spin-the-bottle. The kiss had taken all of three seconds, but he’d remembered how soft her lips were and how they tasted faintly of Juicy Fruit and clove cigarettes. Afterwards, whenever he saw her, Bernard’s heart would beat a little quicker in his chest. Even so, there was always a undercurrent of resentment, almost as if he liked her despite himself. There was little decision making; he kissed her and thus liked her.
    He’d thought it was supposed to work differently.
    She was still small, still somewhat forgettable, though Bernard felt the familiar beating of his heart when they stepped outside to catch up. He covered his eyes to block out the May sun while she talked. She’d left for college in Florida and come back after half a semester, she told him. “It wasn’t a nervous breakdown,” she said, though he hadn’t suggested it was. “It was more like I was there because that’s what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t for me.” She’d been on the way to failing before she drove home in the middle of the night. “It’s a long drive to Maryland, Bernie.”
    “I met Will a few days after I got home,” she continued. “Moved in with him a few weeks later; he lives out in the country. He’s older.” There was an awkward pause as she seemed to search for words to say. It was if, Bernard thought, she just remembered that they weren’t particularly close friends. He wondered if it was often this way when all your real friends were gone. “You should come by sometime. You’ll like each other.” For no reason that Bernard discerned, he said yes and gave her his number.
    Later that night, he called Nick to tell him the news. He’d been leaving messages the past few weeks – one here, another there – and had been searching for another excuse to call. Of all his friends, Nick was the one he’d stayed in the best contact with. It’s hard to be friends with people who’ve moved half-a-country away.
    He answered after the tenth ring. If it had been his cell phone, he probably wouldn’t have answered at all. Dorm rooms, though, still came wired for land lines and savvy parents, he assumed, must love the ability to actually reach their kids. Bernard knew he found it handy.
    “Nick, man. You won’t believe who I ran into,” he said. He wanted to jump right to when his friend was coming home so they could hang out, but he could wait a moment.
    “Hey Bernie.” In the background, he heard loud voices and the popping sound of beer tabs. The silence stretched.
    “So, you want to guess?”
    “Yeah, hold on guys. Don’t start the game without me.” There was some mumbling and curses on the other side. “Look, Bernie, I gotta go. Kind of busy. I’ll see you in August, though.”
    “August? I thought you were coming home in a couple weeks.” He’d been worried about this. Every summer before now, his friends and he went to the beach for a week of debauchery. But ever since his mother asked him to defer college, his friends slipped further away. He’d been accepted at University of Maryland, but his father’s sudden stroke had put a damper on his plans. Working the register at the Giant was not what Bernard envisioned
    When he’d first gotten the job, his friends made it a point to stop by. “Sucks you can’t make it to the beach,” Nick had said during the last visit, when all their friends came, their smiles a hair too broad. He’d been dressed in his uniform: white shirts, green apron and Nick looked ready for the Summer, in a tank top, with bleached-by-the-sun hair. “We’ll miss you, you know. And we’ll do it again next summer.”
    After that trip, they hadn’t come to visit him again and, when school began, the phone calls and emails and messages came less and less frequently. He sort of understood, as time went on, what his parents had always griped about. The only difference between the seasons was the irritation of getting to work. In the winter, his father’s Thunderbird wouldn’t defrost; in the summer, it boiled inside.
    Nick answered while he sipped from a drink. “Nah, going up north with some people out here. I thought I told you.” A girl said something and Nick laughed. “Anyway man, sorry to cut this short. I got to go. See ya!” The phone clicked.
    Bernard thought about calling the other guys: Daniel, Lindsay, Mark, but something told him that the situation would only be repeated. He’d been closest with Nick. In the year that had passed since he’d taken the job at the Giant, he hadn’t made a single friend. It was different when you worked. No one liked the same things as he did and he was an awkward age: everyone else was either super young, like sixteen, or grown up. No one wanted to talk about David Lynch movies or Kung-Fu. The kids didn’t care and the older folks knew all about it.
    Most nights he just went home after work and hung out with his mother and his little sisters. After he gave Denise his number and after he hung up with Nick, he did just that. On the way, he stopped off at the Royal Farms and got a chicken box. The cashier, a big black dude who wore forty-niners gear no matter the season, knew his face well. Bernard tried to talk to him about football once, but he only knew the Ravens and no one on the team. Now he just kept quiet.
    His phone blinked at him when he got back inside. The chicken put to one side, he flipped open the phone and read the text. “Feel like getting some Rita’s?” He didn’t recognize the number, but even so, he typed out, “Sure. Which one?” They both spelled things out, he noticed, instead of text speech. Such things drove him crazy. A second later, the address appeared and he replied, saying he’d be there in twenty minutes.
    Rita’s was pretty empty when he got there, just a couple of kids running around the parking lot and an old couple sitting on a bench, splitting a single Italian Ice. In the little storefront, in one of the handful of chairs, sat Denise. She looked the same as earlier in the day, except she wore an ancient Orioles hat, the bill bent and wrinkled, an outdated graphic of the Oriole bird clutching a bat.
    “Hey Denise,” he said when he walked inside, the young teller squinting at them, playing the <I>are these two dating</I> game that he liked to play himself sometimes. “Been here long?” She shook her head and stood. “Well, good.”
    It wasm’t until they were ordering that Bernard wondered if it actually was a date. He knew that she had a boyfriend – Will? – but still, it felt kind of date-like. When was the last time he’d been on one of those? He’d asked a baker at the Giant out, only to find out she was married with three kids. They didn’t wear wedding rings in the bakery, he discovered. And he was also terrible at guessing ages, or reading signals.
    They settled on small cherry ices and moved outside. “Glad you came out,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t think you would, so last minute and all.”
    “Well, I don’t have much going on,” he replied, thinking about his chicken in the backseat. He’d eaten one wing on the way over. It was probably cold by now. “Just heading home to watch reruns with my family.”
    “Watch what?”
    “I don’t know. My sisters or my mom pick usually. My dad and I would usually watch the Os.” He paused and thought. “The girls aren’t too into it. Are you?” He pointed at her hat.
    “Oh, me? No. This is Will’s. I use it when I’m ... working.”
    “Oh.” Suddenly, he had nothing else to say. Neither did Denise, apparently, and they sat on the curb by his car. The other customers had left in the short time it took them to order and the only other cars in the parking lot was an blue pickup and a tiny Japanese car of indeterminate make. Bernard figured the truck was Denise’s. Or Will’s anyway.
    Before long, their plastic spoons scraped on wet paper and Denise sighed. “Well, thanks for coming out, Bernie. This was fun.” She didn’t sound like she believed it herself, but Bernard nodded anyway.
    “Yeah, this was great. We’ll have to do it again, soon.” He stood to walk her to her car, but she held out a hand for a shake instead. “See you later, Bernie,” and hurried to the pickup truck. When she drove away, clouds of smoke filled the parking lot.
    When he got home, his mother and sisters were halfway through a movie. “You ok?” his mother asked. She looked nice, as if her new job agreed with her. She’d been working the past six months and he wondered if his meager income was really needed. His deferment from the University of Maryland was only good for a year. He’d received a letter just the other day about that. He hadn’t broached the subject, though. “You’re a little late.”
    “I guess so,” he said. On his ride back, he’d tried calling his other friends. None had picked up. “I think I’m going to go to bed.” His sisters didn’t even look at him. Lying in the single bed he’d been sleeping in since grade school, he wondered just what he was doing. Why was he still here? He didn’t have anything tying him here, did he? He wasn’t sure. Family meant something, didn’t it? When he fell asleep, he certainly hadn’t come to any conclusions.
    Three days later, Denise called and said to come to her boyfriend’s house for a drink. He hadn’t done anything since seeing her for Rita’s except work and watch movies with his family, movies he didn’t know the names of, so he said, “Sure, why not?” immediately.
    The drive wasn’t long; maybe ten minutes from his mother’s home, where he still stayed. He followed the directions, driving his father’s old red Ford and pulled up to a large, country-chic house. While the car idled, he picked up an opened envelope lying on the passenger seat. He turned it over in his hands, shook his head and shoved it in the glove box.
    When the front door opened, he was more than a little surprised and chagrined to see Mr. Aviles answer the door. He known he was supposed to be older, but Mr. Aviles didn’t seem like a retired Physics teacher dating a woman a quarter his age; he belonged on the Serengeti, hunting elephants. He was ... intimidating, large, he took up space. Bernard struggled to fill his own bedroom.
    Mr. Aviles had large, even teeth stained yellow. He held a cigar in his huge, hairy hand. White tufts burst from his knuckles and sprouted along his wrist. Mr. Aviles’s face was hidden by a white mane. “Denise is upstairs,” he said, shaking Bernard’s hand. “Why don’t you sit down, drink a beer?”
     He was guided through the eclectic old house, decorated with bohemian rugs and country charm side-by-side. Animal heads stared from the wall, shag carpets ate his footsteps and pictures of dead French jazz musicians took up mantel space (he assumed they were dead and French, anyway. They had long, thin cigarettes and berets). Everything was spotless, old and well-maintained. Only the kitchen was modern, filled with stainless steel appliances and a flat-screen TV, on, muted and turned to ESPN.
    “I know you, don’t I ...,” Mr. Aviles started when they stepped outside. They admired the flowers ringing the patio - red, yellow, purple - in different stages of bloom. A Croquet match was set up in the middle of the expansive yard; it looked like the red ball was a hit or two away from victory. The field verged on a copse of trees and beyond that, darkened woods. The only noise was the chirping of birds crickets. Bernard found himself falling into a sort of trance. He was unused to the country.
    “Bernard.”
    “Yes, of course,” he said, snapping his fingers. “Sorry, names escape me. But I do know you, though?”
    “No sir, not really. I mean, a little.” Seeing a lack of recognition, Bernard continued. “I took Physics last year.” He smiled and added, “Not my thing but you gave me a B minus.”
    “Hmm ..., guess so.” Mr. Aviles motioned for Bernard to sit and handed him a beer from a cooler at his feet. “You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. Call me Will.” Bernard nodded and they sat in silence for some time. Mr. Aviles turned on a radio and found the O’s game before going inside. He returned shortly, carrying an easel and some paints. He set it up and turned to it, leaving Bernard to his thoughts.
    “Maybe you know my mother, Helen,” Bernard said as the silence grew long. Mr. Aviles glanced over from his painting. “She used to work at the high school back in the 80s; she taught English. Helen Delano.”
    “Yeah, I remember her. How is she?” Mr. Aviles turned to his painting again, but kept on listening.
    “She’s fine, better now. Working again,” Bernard said.
    “Was she not working before? She left the school and I just assumed ...”
    Bernard didn’t normally like talking about his family, but he felt reckless. “Well, she stopped working when she married my dad. She was pregnant with me, you know.” Mr. Aviles shook his head, no. “Yeah, well, anyway, she had to scramble to get a job last year. It took a while, but she’s working over at the factory, doing administration stuff.”
    “Ah. I see. And so you’re going to school, I assume. Denise said something about a scholarship.”
    “Did she?” Bernard was surprised. He hadn’t told many people and wondered how Denise knew. “Well, I was going to, but my mom asked me to defer for a year when my dad died. Stay home and help out with a job, with my sisters.” Mr. Aviles stopped painting for a second, and Bernard continued. “She asked me about it again the other day. If I’d put it off for another year.”
    “And ...?”
    “I don’t know. I guess. I can always go back later.” Bernard ran out of things to say, all of a sudden. He often did, when discussing the future and choices he had to make. He was never sure which direction to go. His mother had so many good points about staying home, saving money, getting experience and helping her with everything. He owed it to her, maybe.
    “Reckon so,” Mr. Aviles said. There didn’t seem to be much to say to that, so Bernard let the silence lapse. After a moment and a few sips, he sighed.
    “What’s Denise doing upstairs?” he asked Mr. Aviles, who shrugged.
    “I imagine she’s cleaning herself up. I fixed her up with a studio; she likes to paint, you know.”
    “I didn’t, actually.”
    “No? I thought you were friends?” He raised one bushy eye at Bernard.
    “I don’t know if we were friends,” Bernard thought for a moment. “We knew each other. I thought she was nice, if that’s what you mean.”
    “No.” Mr. Aviles frowned and took a sip of beer. “That’s not what I meant.” Bernard waited for him to finish and thought about the future while they drank in increasingly uncomfortable silence. The letter in his car had come just today from the University of Maryland. They wanted to know if he was going to defer again.
    Bernard jumped when one of Mr. Aviles’s paws thumped his shoulder. Mr. Aviles asked, “You ok there, son?”, his voice low and melodic. “Didn’t mean to startle you.” He offered Bernard a cigar and he put the letter from his mind, grinned
    “You didn’t startle me.” Bernard’s voice cracked and he winced. He’d read that men’s voices subconsciously deepen when they think they can kick another man’s ass and rise when intimidated. He wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but a case could be made. Mr. Aviles was just so much taller, broader, wider, thicker. In every measureable way, Mr. Aviles dwarfed Bernard. “I was just thinking.” He accepted the proffered cigar and put it between his teeth. He felt awkward, but slightly more manly.
    The older man lit Bernard’s cigar and leaned back to watch the setting sun as the Orioles lost another one to the Padres. Maybe the beer had helped; Bernard felt his muscles relax as the darkening sun set off the flowers in a riot of color. Mr. Aviles leaned over his chair occasionally as the long minutes passed and applied a paintbrush into the swirl of color that vaguely resembled the backyard.
    “It’s nice out here,” he said to Mr. Aviles after several moments of smoking. “I’d be out here every night, if I could.”
    “Would you now?” Mr. Aviles asked, raising one bushy eyebrow. “Denise is out here all the time, futzing with the flowers and all.”
    “They’re beautiful.”
    Mr. Aviles nodded and sucked on his cigar, letting out plumes of smoke. Bernard imitated him, with minimal success. During a coughing fit, Mr. Aviles said, “Try not to inhale, son. It works ... poorly.”
    “I’m sure,” Bernard said, in between gasps. “I was just thinking and, um, forgot.”
    “You think a lot, it seems.” Mr Aviles laughed. “Thinking is good,”
    “Thinking is good?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how to take that. It seemed so obvious. “Are you being sarcastic?”
    Mr. Aviles laughed. “Of course not. I mean just that: thinking is good. Denise is all in her head all the time. She comes up with the craziest shit. You’d think I’d be prepared, but I never am.”
    “I see.” He wasn’t sure he did.
    “You’re a thinker. I’m not, never have been.”
    “But ...,” He trailed off and Mr. Aviles cut him short with a look. He opened his mouth to continue, but as he did, the glass door opened.
    “Hey boys,” Denise said. Mr. Aviles stood when she walked over and Bernard aped him, albeit slowly. “Don’t get up,” she said.
    “Too late, eh?’ Will said, leaning in for a kiss. It started innocently enough, Bernard thought, but it swiftly became less so. He turned his head and blanched when the kiss deepened. He couldn’t help but think of their ages. Denise was the same age as him: nineteen. Meanwhile, Mr. Aviles was easily in his sixties. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw them break. Mr. Aviles’s beard looked damp.
    “Hey Denise,” he said, holding up his near-empty beer as if to toast. Her hair in a simple ponytail, flecks of paint splattered her face. She wore old coveralls, also covered in paint. “Good to see you.”
    “Sorry about the mess,” she touched her cheek and clothes. “I sort of lost track of time.”
    “Denise is quite the artist,” Mr. Aviles put his large hand on her shoulder. Bernard noticed that his palm could almost swallow her head. “I’m quite proud of her.”
    She frowned and squirmed under his hand. “They’re nothing,” she said.
    “No, really. She’s very good. Better than me,” he said, flipping his brush at his easel. When the painting toppled over, he chuckled, unconcerned. “Show him your paintings, darling.” Mr. Aviles spoke quickly, grabbed Bernard and Denise’s hands, pushed them toward the door. “Come back when you’re done.”
    They stared at each other in the large kitchen as the door closed behind them. Bernard’s hand and shoulder itched from where they were pushed/pulled. He hated being directed like that, like he was a child, unable to take initiative. He shrugged it off; outside, Mr. Aviles walked away, toward the croquet set. Denise shrugged.
    “He plays against himself, you know.”
    “Really?” Bernard laughed.
    “Yeah, really. He says it keeps his mind working. He plays chess against himself, too.” She pointed toward a chess set on the kitchen counter. Black was losing, badly. “He plays one move a day, alternating sides. He’s not very good, though.” She stood there a moment and said, “Come on.”
    They walked through the large house in silence; Bernard’s shoes lost in the plush carpets. He blushed when he noticed Denise’s bare feet. He slipped off his own shoes at the front door. When they reached the stairs, Denise hesitated at a collage of pictures on the wall before passing them and heading upstairs. Bernard stopped and saw all the smiling faces: children and families, all clearly related to Mr. Aviles. “Who are these people?” he asked.
    “Will’s children and their kids,” she said without turning. She disappeared around a corner and Bernard hurried up the stairs. “Right through here.” She pointed at a door to their right. When he paused, she jerked her head. Bernard pushed the door open.
    Almost all of the wall space was taken by oil paintings. The colors were dark: reds and deep purples and browns and blacks. Children with alien-large eyes held the hands of demons in one painting. On another, vehicles of fire rode through buildings. One painting captured his attention, than he was caught by another. “These are ... something,” he said, discomfited.
    “They’re a little dark,” she said from behind him. “I know it’s weird.”
    “You don’t seem ...,” he looked for the words.
    “What? Scary?”
    Bernard thought. “I guess.” He wandered around the room. He came to the canvas set in the middle of the room that caught the last of the sun’s rays. “I guess I don’t know you that well,” he said. The painting was half-finished, the paint wet. In it, a naked woman stretched out on a mattress of flowers, her waist half severed. She smiled.
    “Will wants me to express myself. He says that it’ll, I don’t know, help.” She laughed, but to Bernard, it sounded like a choke. “Will says a lot.”
    “That so?” Bernard wasn’t convinced. In the thirty minutes they’d been outside, Mr. Aviles had barely spoken ten sentences.
    “My friends make him nervous. Not that I have many around here anymore, but I invited two girls over a couple weeks ago. He didn’t know how to act around them; one of them was in his last class before he retired. He tried talking about Hip-Hop; stayed up watching BET the night before. It didn’t work well so he wound up lecturing us on the history of Rock n Roll. He said they made him feel old.” She picked up a brush and dipped it in paint before putting it to the canvas. “Not sure why.” She grinned.
    They stood there in silence while Denise painted and Bernard observed. Though the finished paintings depicted disturbing things, they didn’t make him feel particularly uncomfortable. “These are really good. He was right.”
    “He tries to show me off, sometimes. It can get weird; we went to his buddy’s house to fish a few weeks back. He wanted me to wear this little bikini. The old dudes ...,” She frowned at the painting. “You know, I thought I was pregnant. When I saw you the other day.”
    “Thought?”
    “I’m not. I got my period yesterday.” Bernard shifted his weight from one foot to another and waited. “I didn’t tell him.” She turned to face him. “I’m not planning on it, either.”
    “I see.”
    “Sorry to lay this all on you. It’s just that ... I don’t really have anyone else to talk to about it. Even if I wanted to tell my parents about this, they don’t want to hear about me and Will. They don’t. Um. Approve.” While she spoke, her hand holding the paint brush attacked the canvas. Bernard was fascinated as the violent scene took on form. Clouds formed, not happy ones, but masses full of darkness. A hand from the sky came down through the clouds and grasped the woman, nails gouging and ripping. As Denise painted, the woman’s smile became larger, desperate. It made Bernard, queasy, yet not as much as he would have expected.
    When the light from outside faded completely, Denise laid her brush down. “Let’s go,” she said. She took Bernard’s hand in the near-dark, their fingers fumbling. Bernard felt a shock as they connected. “Will’s waiting downstairs, I’m sure.”
    The old wood echoed their bare footsteps. They didn’t speak or let go of each other’s hands. When they got to the patio door, Bernard paused. “It’s getting late,” he said.
    “Yeah. You probably need to get home, don’t you?”
    “Little bit. I work tomorrow morning and my mom asked me to come home early, help her around the house.” He thought for a moment. “She’s probably home by now. It took a while for that to happen.”
    “For what?” Denise looked confused.
    “Her to find a job. It’s why I didn’t go to college, you know? She wasn’t working when my dad died and everything...”
    “So you could go back now? If you wanted to.” She paused. “To college, I mean.”
    “I could. I’ve thought about it. I got a letter the other day saying I could re-enroll.” He fell silent. “It’s getting late. I really should go now.”
    Denise nodded. “You should come back over sometime. The three of us can ...,” she trailed off.
    “For sure.” He let go of her hand and took a step back. Then he held his hand up again, awkward. “Good to see you, Denise,” he said, waiting until she followed his lead. They high-fived, limp-wristed. “I know the way out.”
    Bernard turned and went through the kitchen. He listened for the sound of the glass door to the patio and didn’t hear it. He felt her stare. At the front door, he fumbled with his shoes and waited for Denise to appear. When she didn’t, he opened the door and walked outside.
    It was pitch black outside and he could barely see his car where it waited on the gravel driveway. Somehow, though, he could see the outline of Mr. Aviles where he leaned against the hood.
    “Mr. Aviles?”
    “Just inspecting your car, son. It’s nice. Firebird?”
    “I guess so, sir.” Bernard looked at it in the darkness. It looked like a car to him. “It’s my father’s.”
    “Ah. I see. I like cars, got a few of them. Some from when I was younger, some I bought a couple years ago, ‘cause fuck it, I’m old and I want them. I talk to Denise about cars sometimes. She doesn’t seem to care much.” Bernard didn’t know how to respond, so said nothing. Mr. Aviles turned to him and even in the dark, it was obvious he wanted to say something. Finally, he blurted out. “She’s lonely up here, son,” he said. “She’s a special girl, you know that, right?”
    “I suppose so.” He paused. “I don’t really know her that well.”
    “She told me about you, Bernard. Said you guys dated back in high school.”
    “I don’t know if I would call it dating, sir ...”
    “I told you not to call me sir.” There was a smile in his voice. “Whatever you’d call it, she told me about it. She was excited when she said you were coming to visit. You think I’m blind?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    Mr. Aviles studied him in the dark. “You don’t, do you? That’s refreshing. Boy, I’m old and she’s young. She’s confused and I’m lucky, but I have grandchildren older than her.” His laugh had no mirth in it. “Her parents want to kill me and my children want to kill her, afraid she’s trying to get something over on me. They don’t get it.”
    “Don’t get what sir – I mean, Will?”
    “I’m just here until she figures out what she wants and grows up. She’s here until I decide I’m old and going to die.” He coughed, continued. “It isn’t bad; we’re just two lonely people using each other. But she’s going to need to go back to people her own age. Like you. And I’m not asking you to take her from me (that’d be strange, don’t you think?) but she needs a friend. You understand me?”
    “Not really.” But he did, kind of. They were lost and alone, all three of them, treading water. He wanted to tell Mr. Aviles how he felt, how all his friends had left and how there was nothing for him here. But he still didn’t know how. “Maybe.”
    “Good. All I can ask is you be her friend. You don’t have to do it.” Mr. Aviles – Will – stuck out his hand. He shook, matching Will’s grip with effort. “You have a good night, Bernard. Hope to see you soon.” He went inside, leaving Bernard alone.
    The drive went quickly, Bernard on auto-pilot. They wanted him to come back, which was nice. He hadn’t made a friend in quite some time. And Denise was ... what was she? When he pulled up to his mother’s house, he still wasn’t sure.
    He turned the engine off and stared at his mother’s house. It wasn’t anything remarkable: a small three bedroom brick building with a small deck and fenced in backyard. He slept in the attic, his young sisters and mother in the bedrooms. He’d been here for a long time. Bernard was getting older and he felt stifled. He wanted to decide something, anything for himself.
    Just then, his cell phone rang. He looked at the display, clearly outlined in the darkness and saw the name Denise flashing over and over. He started to pick it up, hesitated, and let it ring itself out. When it stopped, he looked at his mother’s house in front of him. He turned to the back seat and saw his uniform, hanging, neatly pressed and waiting for tomorrow. He groaned.
    Bernard reached over the passenger’s seat and flipped open the glove box. The letter from the University of Maryland lay there. He grabbed it and pulled out the application to re-enroll. “Better do something,” he said. He turned the car on and pulled out of the driveway, wondering where he could find stamps at this time of night.

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