You might be wondering why I didn’t just fill in this gaping hole, though, to Scully. I could understand how he’d overlooked me. It had, after all, been dark that night, and confusing, and even though our voices kept rising, mostly we’d tried to keep them to a whisper so as not to disturb the custodians, who even then were moving through the hallways like distant comets. And to be truthful, I’d never gone back, never really been part of the “Club.” But all those factors aside, I’d been there that first night.
The real reason I hadn’t divulged this earlier today was that for me, the significance of the evening had been bound up in the fact that there’d been a girl there. I didn’t really want to think about her, and I hadn’t much at all. And the truth of the matter was that I had never told my wife about her. Never. Though I hadn’t consciously avoided telling her all these many years, I’ll admit that I’d missed opportunities to tell her. And in fact, there was one moment from that night that came back with particular acuteness to me. We’d all had something to drink and something to smoke — Sammy Rusa, in addition to supplying the keys, had flipped open a flask of Jack Daniel’s. We kissed, this girl and I, started to do some other things, and then one of us pulled back. I figured there’d be plenty of time; this was only the beginning. As that night in the school turned into morning, I found myself escorting the object of my affection downstairs toward the parking lot. We decided we’d go home for a few hours, or maybe go to a twenty-four-hour diner, revive over some coffee. At the top of the stairs that still looked like a possibility, even though by the time we’d made it to the first landing several minutes later, we’d both recognize that what she really needed was to empty her stomach of its contents and to be taken home, where she could slip stealthily into her own bed. For the moment, I had my arm around her and she felt good, though limp as a weed. She staggered and swayed on the steps, one arm on the rail and the other clinging to my shoulder. As we went down, she blurted, “These stairs are really a pain in the ass. Edgerton should get rid of these stairs and replace them with stars.”
Edgerton was the principal. At the time, I thought that that was easily the most charming and witty and poetic thing I’d ever heard anyone say who wasn’t dead and British. My belief in the sheer genius of the statement had carried over to the next day, as it would for years to come. I felt that it held tantalizing mysteries that I would peel away slowly. The next day, I approached her before homeroom, giddy with lack of sleep. But not only did she not recall saying the words that I had celebrated even while I half-slept, not only did she flat-out deny having said them at all, but she refused to talk to me at all, then or ever again.
And that’s what I was thinking about as snores issuing from somewhere nearby faded. I could sense Lena, a patch of warmth there beside me, and then just beyond, in the vestibule, the kids, lying silent, their warmth more tightly circumscribed. I sat up, unzipped the tent, and, quietly as I could, ventured out. At a picnic table, I gazed back over the silent campground. As my eyes began to adjust, the scattered domes appeared strange to me, like some sort of village had sprung up here, tucked into the wilderness. And then I had the idea that within this village, each of the houses could have been a miniature planetarium. Even as I thought it, I recognized this for what it was: a fanciful notion. Yet I must admit it stirred in me a momentary satisfaction. Not the kind I get when I’m the one who’s able to solve a particularly thorny design problem, one that’s stumped the room; no, this was something else entirely. I sat there and shivered and watched the tents gradually resolve themselves, becoming mere tents again, hunkered down under the vastness of the sky. Then a pummeling wind came at once from all directions, and all I could hear was the thrash of canvas, flapping, rippling, and, almost inexplicably, holding fast.
The Gendarmes
Aloud banging noise was coming from my roof, and it wouldn’t let up. I kept glaring at the ceiling and waiting for it to cease, but nay — crescendo. Finally, I stormed outside. Sure enough, an entire baseball team was up on my roof, again—gloves, bats, a catcher in full tools of ignorance. In lieu of a baseball cap, each wore the signature blue headgear with yellow trim of the French military police. The catcher was the only one properly attired.
“Hey!” I said. “You’re playing baseball on my roof.”
A squat, wider man with a brazen mustache caught a crisp throw from third base, which I couldn’t see but assumed was on the far side. He spat tobacco in my general direction. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“That’s my roof you’re playing baseball on,” I said.
A lanky fellow, no more than eighteen, looked down. “And a mighty fine roof it is.”
Squat Mustache added, “Got some loose shingles over here between second and third, what our shortstop tells me.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“You could be looking at a lawsuit,” he said. “I’d get those fixed.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
“We’re the Gendarmes,” said one, sleeve outstretched with child-showing-off-diorama pride.
Just then a sharp foul ball took a harrowing turn, ricocheting off an oak trunk and toward my head. I snared it. There as a collective gasp from the roof, followed by a shout of “Out!” or “Oui!” from somewhere over my kitchen, from a slight hump of an umpire.
I examined the baseball. It was a ball like any other, only around the stitching it read “For Rooftop Use Only. Danger: Do Not Use On Grass. Potential Combustible.”
I looked up.
“Explosive, eh?” I asked.
The players began to look at one another nervously. Then Squat Mustache called down, “We don’t talk about that. Traditional league rules. Just don’t get chlorophyll on it.”
“And redundant,” I continued scornfully. “‘Potential. Combustible.’ Wasteful, just wasteful.” I shook my head disgustedly; nothing infuriated me more than redundancy.