Free Reunion by Hugh Fox Page A

he’d sneered (after three snifters of Cointreau): “You think all that crap means anything? It’s like pissing into the sea. You might as well submit to the local toilet, flush it down the drain for all the difference it makes!!”
    But instead of getting pissed at Fred, Buzz had developed this tremendous feeling of compassion toward him. Compassion on the edge of pity.
    Five years since Buzz had seen him?
    He was almost afraid to open the front door and see what was inside. Ellen opening up, maternally insisting, “Wipe your feet on the doormat, I hate everything all tracked up!” Buzz wiping his feet perhaps a little too vigorously, almost like he was doing some sort of Czech folk dance, Malinche looking lost and overwhelmed, a tiny black speck emerging out of the immensity of the white landscape, up the stairs, stomping her feet on the mat like she was satirizing Buzz, always this satirical little genie in her, waiting (wanting) to be activated …
    Walking inside like walking into a cover of
Country Living, The American Home
, everywhere big plush sofas covered with quilted covers, little quilts folded and draped over armrests, little maple chairs with quilted seat-cushions, big oval twisted rag-rugs all over the highly polished bare oak floors, a grandfather clockover in one corner by the fireplace, the fireplace itself ablaze, one log falling apart in a cascade of fiery flickers just as they walked in, Fred sitting in an extra-plush, winged-back chair next to the fire with a big Buster Brown quilt all over his knees (knee) like a crumpled, white haired (what there was left of it) rag-doll, as they walked in Ellen holding her hands up like a symphony conductor begging for PIANO-PIANISSIMO … going quietly over to Fred, standing in front of him, “Fred, Freddie … Freddie … we’re here,” Fred not moving, her finally getting louder “Fred! Fred! We’re back, Fred!,” a strident note of desperation in her voice, for a moment Buzz thinking “Christ, the poor bastard’s dead!”
    He sure looked dead enough. Not a bad way to go. The Kiss of God way to go, that’s how the Jews put it, no pain, you just stop … like turning off the TV …
    Ellen finally getting nasty. Obviously this was something she had to deal with a lot.
    â€œFred, for god’s sake!”
    Shaking him awake, him opening his eyes like he’d just been attacked by a grizzly bear.
    â€œWha … wha … what?”
    â€œTime to go to bed, honey!”
    Fred looking around, seeing them, the look of horror slowly giving way to recognition, acceptance, then even amused irony.
    â€œShe likes to do that to me. Kind of a cardiac test. If it doesn’t just arrest, it bodes well for you … ”
    â€œBodes … ?” Malinche a little discombobulated.
    â€œIt’s Lit Prof talk,” laughed Buzz, “Elizabethan big talk … it means like … ”
    â€œBodes as in the Icelandic Boda. Fortells … you go to one of these reunions, I tell ya, and it gets you full of forebodings. It’s like looking in the mirror of your own collective, social history,” said Fred, starting to get up, only somehow misjudging, miscalculating, losing his balance, falling off the chair, knocking over a little quilted-doilie-covered coffee table next to him with an big elaborate teapot on it, white, filled with little blue fleurs de lis, spilling the tea all over the floor. Only it wasn’t just tea, was it? The room suddenly filled with the pungent, acrid high-octane smell of Gordon’s gin.
    â€œSonofabitch, I forgot my leg was off,” he said, struggling to right himself, like a capsized tugboat in high seas, Buzz rushing over to help him, but he didn’t want any help, “I’m OK, I can do it, for crissake, God knows I’ve had enough practice!” Pulling himself up, grabbing on to the chair, somehow simultaneously