“Make yourself comfortable, you know where everything is.” It was just like I had remembered it. The clock with the broken second hand was still broken, and the plastic that we had ripped as kids was still ripped and covering the same couch.

“You want something to drink?”

“Sure? What do you have?”

“Milk and orange juice. Oh, and some Kool-Aid.”

“Kool-Aid? What flavor?”

“There’s only one flavor for black folks, Montana, red.”

“Red is not a flavor. It’s a color.”

“In the ghetto, red is a flavor and a color.”

“Do you really have Kool-Aid?”

“No, but I wish I did. Oh, I know what. I have just the thing. It’s the perfect occasion.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Just a minute.” Rushing out of the room, trying to surprise me, it was William at his usual best. Fun-loving. Playful. Still a kid at heart.

“You better hurry up. I don’t have all night, you know.”

“First, let me take a little chill out of the air.” William entered the family room looking like Paul Bunyon with an armful of logs.

“You could have just turned the heater on, you know.”

“I could have. But it’s broken. I’ve been meaning to go get a new one, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.”

“You’re a contractor and you don’t have a heater that works?”

“Yeah. Just like dentists have the worst teeth. And mechanics have the worst cars. And flight attendants have the most baggage.”

“Touché!”

William started the fire with the skill of a Boy Scout. Fanning the flames, flipping the logs, poking and prodding until like one of the Fantastic Four he yelled—“Flame on! Perfect. Warm. Toasty. Just like when we were growing up. And next, a little something to wet the whistle.” William pulled from inside the tall wooden buffet a bottle of champagne that looked like Chicken George himself had fermented it. It was covered with dust as thick as cotton, which, after he stopped himself from choking to death, William quickly wiped off.

“This bottle was a gift from my father to my mother in 1982.”

“Don’t you mean 1882?”

“Ha ha. It was 1982, to celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. And since of course my mother, like your mother, believes drinking is a sin and an abomination before God, she never opened it. Their loss is our gain.” Handing me a glass, he started to open the bottle.

“But it’s for a celebration,” I said. “We have to have something to celebrate if we open it.”

“We do. We’ll celebrate you finding Mr. Right. That’s right with an R, not a W,” he said winking, and popping the cork. The champagne erupted from the bottle and after he poured, we clinked glasses and slowly sipped. It was good. Sweet, just like I like it.

“Okay, so now I’m wide awake. This movie better be good.”