LEAVE a city. Return to a city. A city takes no note of the motes that float across its wide blind eye.
Leave a small town. Return to a small town. A small town thrums like a spider's string at the least passing breeze.
NEGOTIATIONS between J.'s uncle and the principal—with J. riding shotgun, silent save the odd nod or plausibly contrite monosyllable—resulted in J.'s reinstatement to his cohort despite the few days left on the academic calendar. Conditions, however, abounded. No more pranks. Sure. No more fights. Fine. No more cut classes. Right.
Garlands of stares and whispers adorned J.'s return. He wanted to tell them all to go take a flying Rimbaud at the moon but instead kept his head down through the quiet study periods and student presentations and screenings of Schindler's List and Shakespeare in Love, the myriad tricks teachers used to drift across the finish line when their tanks had long since run dry. On the last day of classes, J.'s final exams and papers were returned with shrugs, eyerolls, and head shakes but—miracle of miracles—little enough red ink to stave off the threat of summer school.
Life Sanforized to the size of the diner, whose habitués welcomed J. back as one would a recrudescent rash. The first customer to speak to him—beyond rote recitations off the menu—was the dance instructor, who taught ballet, belly, bharatanatyam, cha-cha, disco, flamenco, foxtrot, jazz, jitterbug, kabuki, kathak, mambo, modern, quickstep, rumba, samba, step, swing, tango, tap, waltz, et cetera in an old small barn by the diner that also doubled as a meeting hall.
"M______, that's an uncommon last name," she said as J. refilled her coffee.
"Is it," J. said.
"I knew a Charlie M______, ax man out of Boston. Used to jam in New York parks with George Jones."
"Huh."
"Any relation?"
"No idea."
"Charlie certainly knew his way around an alto," she muttered into her mug, her eyes distant and brows relevé.
J. ripped the receipt off his check pad. "Take your—"
TIME: Summer. Not too long ago.
Place: A small town.
Dust off the sun. Toss it in a long arc from behind the church steeple early in the morning so it burns long and slow down upon the sere town. Let it smear the gloaming sky honey and mint and lavender when it finally drops behind the trees lining the edge of the park. Dust off the moon. Wrap it in a luminous haze and set it adrift among the stars. Flick the rainbow oscillations of the traffic light into the pooling shadows on streets sidewalks storefronts. Rattle an occasional nighttime storm through town. Crack the black clouds with lightning, set St. Elmo's fire to the steeple, swelter the air with heavy velvet humidity that lingers long enough to bubble and steam under the next morning's scalding dawn. Summer could always be here.
WHERE was Blue? Not at the diner not at the bakery not at the bus stop not at the soda shop not at the gas station not at the grocery store not at the antique store not at the video store not at the bookstore not at the pizzeria not at the lake not at the inn not at home.
The answer arrived in an exchange between the dance instructor and Blue's neighbor while J. hunkered behind the counter, tucked into The 42nd Parallel and not trying to eavesdrop at all, not even a little bit. The dance instructor had received a postcard of the Washington Monument ("She knows I have a soft spot for obelisks"), the neighbor one of the Lincoln Memorial ("Whatta babe"). Blue was down in the District of Columbia for some junior leadership program until September. J. also learned—as the conversation shifted into a stage whisper—that Blue Sr. had not crossed the diner's threshold since the night of the car crash, when she and J.'s uncle had clashed in the town square over Blue's injury and J.'s responsibility. In sum, both uncle and nephew were bereft of Blues.
