“Well, holy shit. Good for him.” He stood up. “We gotta go.” He looked at his watch. “Mom and Dad are waiting.” Then, as Richard rose, too, as both of them scanned the dirt road once more, Charles added, “I’m gonna order the meatloaf. You?”

7

Scenes like these…litter on the green Goblin topiary of Richard’s life…

To his deep relief, the pair graduated from Goblin High and went to different colleges after all. Both would return home for the holidays (Charles went to school near Goblin and still lived with his parents, Richard was downstate), and never at any of these reunions did Charles ever mention so much as a crush. The more Richard thought about it, the more he loved and lost, the more he saw, in relief, how little Charles seemed to speak of women. For this, when he first heard news that Charles had found himself a girlfriend, when Mrs. Ridnour told him so, Richard shamefully wondered what type of woman could feel comfortable entering Charles’s world. If he himself had partially glimpsed the inner workings of Charles’s mind, what intimate view would a woman have? Charles wasn’t the kind of man to hide his colors. He wouldn’t have known what they looked like to begin with.

Richard couldn’t stop marveling at the concept. And what he discovered was that he felt vindicated by the news. All those nights he’d fought to ignore what the other kids at Goblin High thought of his friend; all those nights he’d wished (painfully) for Charles to make another friend; all the times he’d backed him…spiritually…sending some faith his friend’s way for no reason other than a deep, unfounded obligation to do so. And now! Charles had a girlfriend. Charles Ridnour, a man whom women avoided on sight, on instinct, despite his not having spoken to them at all. Richard had long been fearful of introducing his love interests to Charles. It seemed like a strike against him, a reason for a woman to turn away. And yet…still…the faith. Richard had never been able to extricate that silent, unseen handshake, the deal he’d made within himself in a cabin at swim camp so long ago.

Flashes! Slices! Richard, standing before the topiary of Charles, the rain making masks of his own face, recalled standing in the bleachers at a Marauders home game…those bleachers packed with manic students…waving green-and-purple flags…the smell of hot dogs and pretzels and the shampoo of all the pretty girls…the great floodlights illuminating the big game on the field…Charles below, beating a bass drum in that great Goblin band. Brianne Stockton leaned over to Richard and said, “Isn’t that your friend Charles?”

Your friend Charles.

Nobody else’s friend Charles.

Flashes! Slices! Richard coming home from college to find a note taped to his door:

I’m in town. At the library. Meet me?

—Charles

And how Richard walked the streets of downtown to greet his lonely friend. How they’d gone out that night and drank more than they’d planned. Richard threw up on the walk home and Charles talked as if ten people were vying for speaking space within him.