He could see the silhouette of the atom smasher in the low horizon, unmistakable even in the gentle red light given off from the city center, eight miles away. He’d never heard it called the more modern term: particle accelerator. Compared to the ones they built now, it was minuscule. But he’d always been told that it was the first one ever made, and so it had an excuse for being a nuclear pipsqueak. Even so, the metal icecream cone was six stories high; it sat on top of a large, ugly bunker of a building constructed out of concrete and corrugated steel. The whole structure covered over an acre of land, the cracked and weedy parking lot surrounding it covering at least two more. The orange paint flaked off in handfuls, and there were few windows; it looked like the setting for a bad postapocalyptic film. Yet Westinghouse had tucked it away in this residential enclave, presumably so that many of its employees could live nearby and walk to work. Fortunately, the topography of his home town meant that he couldn’t see the ugly bunker from the deck, only the metal dome itself.
Forest Hills was aptly named; virtually every backyard was a slope in one direction or another. His parents’ house poked out of the hillside like a shelf fungus on a locust tree. The ancient Westinghouse complex lay off to his left, only four lots away. The old-fashioned Westinghouse tinker toy W painted on its side was eye level. He’d actually thought about taking the sweaty girl from the bar there after all this time. He’d already forgotten her name, and he’d never been attracted to her, other than in the basest, most pragmatic way, an opportunity, even if it wasn’t particularly appealing. Man, he thought, it’s been a long time since I’ve done it there. Remembering that none of the girls had been over seventeen, he thought, it was statutory rape, and I was too stupid to even know it. Maybe some of the girls’ luck did rub off on me, since I never got caught.
In high school he’d been well-liked and thought handsome by enough girls that it had become accepted as fact by everyone else. But he hadn’t been a star in sports or in anything else, and so his professional success had made coming home to his tenth reunion a pleasure. He still looked good, had a pretty wife and a career that many of his former classmates envied. He’d loved saying, “I’m a sports writer,” over and over between sips of warm beer. “For the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Had to move to the Sun Belt, but I’m still a Steelers fan.” It had gone over so well that his dreams had rung with the social success of it for weeks.
But four years later, the wife was gone, as was the job — the price of being in a junior position in a downsizing industry. He still had a friend or two, though fewer than he thought. Print journalism is dead anyway, they all said. Do online stuff, they said. As though it were that simple; as though that was the way to get rich. But his boss had said, “Sorry, Ronnie, but you’re not that good. My advice? Find a different line of work.”
He’d received a mailing about the fifteenth reunion. The irony of not having to travel this time did not make him smile. Now he stared at the atom smasher and thought, this time maybe I can get it to work for me.
His mother said, “What a blessing that the sun’s out,” for the fifth time, as she pulled a five-pound package of hamburger meat from the refrigerator. It had rained for the last three days. Now the sky was empty of everything but a hot, white sun, the blue around it hard, like thick glass. It made Ronnie’s head hurt to look at it; he’d been at the bar again the night before, and he had a hangover. It hadn’t even been worth it; the available women had been either unattractive or uninterested. Now he followed his mother’s orders, and spent the morning setting up chairs in the backyard and helping her shape the loose, wet meat into patties. At noon, she released him, saying, “Just don’t make a mess anywhere.”
He pulled a can of soda from the refrigerator and went upstairs to the second-floor deck. He sat, popped the can, and looked at the atom smasher, hanging above the trees beyond the yard. It looked like a huge, fat metal teardrop that was going the wrong way. Like a giant cried while standing on his head, he thought. Maybe I can get a job as a poet. Then he almost smiled, thinking, there’s one of the few jobs that probably pays less than a newspaperman. He took a drink; it was too sweet. Root beer. He hadn’t noticed what he’d taken from the kitchen. His mother always had a large stockpile of soda in case they had company, and today they were expecting a lot of it. She bought the stuff by the case, store brands that came in all the basic flavors: cola, ginger ale, root beer, grape, and orange. He wondered how they got away with using words that designated actual fruits. Orange was a color too, of course. But, he thought, the words are always followed by the microscopic amendment, flavored drink. Root beer used to be the boiled and carbonated syrup of the sassafras root. He knew because his Uncle Lou had made some when he was a kid. It tasted alcoholic to him then. Knowing his Uncle Lou, it probably had been fermented. The stuff in the can was mostly corn syrup and some unknowable chemicals that tap-danced on your taste buds and some sort of dye the color of shit. He drained the rest of the can. He thought, maybe I could get a job as a taste tester for crappy cola.
From the deck he could peek through the slats in the railing and watch the festivities without being seen. The basement door two stories below opened out to a brick patio some twenty feet square; it was dotted with a disreputable but solid collection of lawn chairs culled from sixty years of family gatherings. A gas grill the size of a player piano sat on a far corner of the patio, and his father was replacing the propane tank underneath it, something his mother had wanted him to do the day before, and had loudly wanted Ronnie to help him. Ronnie was relieved that his father had ignored her on both counts. His mother didn’t seem to know he was up on the deck, and his seated position allowed him to be invisible from below unless he chose to poke his head up above the wooden railing.
Behind him, he heard the brushing sound of the screen door into the upstairs den, and turned to see his cousin Gary standing on the threshold. He hadn’t seen Gary in several years, and his looks hadn’t improved. Gary was a few inches shorter than Ronnie, and was usually heavier. Ronnie had always thought that Gary had a head the shape of a potato, though of course much larger; he thought about this now, since the resemblance had grown more pronounced with the years. Gary came onto the deck, a soda can in his hand as well, and sat down on a chair identical to the one on which Ronnie sat, white-painted rattan with cushions in a loud floral print. “So, Ronnie,” he said, “how’s it hangin’?”
Ronnie gave the automatic answer, rehearsed and perfected and enjoyed many times in their shared youth: “High and long, Gary, high and long.”
Gary tipped his can toward Ronnie, who raised his, and they met with a satisfying tink. Ronnie remembered that Gary had had to stop drinking a few years ago. Two years? Three? He couldn’t recall, nor could he recall any of the details his mother had told him, although he was pretty sure that Gary had ended up in rehab. Gary no longer had a wife, and the divorce was complicated by the fact that he had two kids, or maybe it was three; Ronnie couldn’t recall the details of that either. Ronnie hadn’t seen any young kids running around the backyard below, so he supposed Gary’s ex had custody. Here at last, he thought, was someone who would also understand the meaning of bad luck.