Hearts in Atlantis(38)

When they got to the wagon, Bobby bought only one hotdog instead of the two he had been planning on. His appetite seemed to have shrunk. When they got back to Field B, where the Wolves' coaches had now appeared with the equipment cart, the bench Ted had been sitting on was empty.

'Come on, come on!' Coach Terrell called, clapping his hands. 'Who wants to play some baseball here?'

That night Ted cooked his famous casserole in the Garfields' oven. It meant more hotdogs, but in the summer of 1960 Bobby Garfield could have eaten hotdogs three times a day and had another at bedtime.

He read stuff to Ted out of the newspaper while Ted put their dinner together. Ted only wanted to hear a couple of paragraphs about the impending Patterson-Johansson rematch, the one everybody was calling the fight of the century, but he wanted to hear every word of the article about tomorrow night's Albini-Haywood tilt at The Garden in New York. Bobby thought this moderately weird, but he was too happy to even comment on it, let alone complain.

He couldn't remember ever having spent an evening without his mother, and he missed her, yet he was also relieved to have her gone for a little while. There had been a queer sort of tension running through the apartment for weeks now, maybe even for months. It was like an electrical hum so constant that you got used to it and didn't realize how much a part of your life it had become until it was gone. That thought brought another of his mother's sayings to mind.

'What are you thinking?' Ted asked as Bobby came over to get the plates.

'That a change is as good as a rest,' Bobby replied. 'It's something my mom says. I hope she's having as good a time as I am.'

'So do I, Bobby,' Ted said. He bent, opened the oven, checked their dinner. 'So do I.'

The casserole was terrific, with canned B&M beans - the only kind Bobby really liked - and exotic spicy hotdogs not from the supermarket but from the butcher just off the town square. (Bobby assumed Ted had bought these while wearing his 'disguise.') All this came in a horseradish sauce that zinged in your mouth and then made you feel sort of sweaty in the face. Ted had two helpings; Bobby had three, washing them down with glass after glass of grape Kool-Aid.

Ted blanked out once during the meal, first saying that he could feel them in the backs of his eyeballs, then lapsing either into some foreign language or outright gibberish, but the incident was brief and didn't cut into Bobby's appetite in the slightest. The blank-outs were part of Ted, that was all, like his scuffling walk and the nicotine stains between the first two fingers of his right hand.

They cleaned up together, Ted stowing the leftover casserole in the fridge and washing the dishes, Bobby drying and putting things away because he knew where everything went.

'Interested in taking a ride to Bridgeport with me tomorrow?' Ted asked as they worked. 'We could go to the movies - the early matinee - and then I have to do an errand.'

'Gosh, yeah!' Bobby said. 'What do you want to see?'

'I'm open to suggestions, but I was thinking perhaps Village of the Damned, a British film. It's based on a very fine science-fiction novel by John Wyndham. Would that suit?'

At first Bobby was so excited he couldn't speak. He had seen the ads for Village of the Damned in the newspaper - all those spooky-looking kids with the glowing eyes - but hadn't thought he would ever actually get to see it. It sure wasn't the sort of Saturday-matinee movie that would ever play at Harwich on the Square or the Asher Empire. Matinees in those theaters consisted mostly of big-bug monster shows, westerns, or Audie Murphy war movies. And although his mother usually took him if she went to an evening show, she didn't like science fiction (Liz liked moody love stories like The Dark at the Top of the Stairs). Also the theaters in Bridgeport weren't like the antiquey old Harwich or the somehow businesslike Empire, with its plain, undecorated marquee. The theaters in Bridgeport were like fairy castles - they had huge screens (swag upon swag of velvety curtains covered them between shows), ceilings where tiny lights twinkled in galactic profusion, brilliant electric wall-sconces . . . and two balconies.

'Bobby?'

'You bet!' he said at last, thinking he probably wouldn't sleep tonight. 'I'd love it. But aren't you afraid of ... you know . . . '

'We'll take a taxi instead of the bus. I can phone for another taxi to take us back home later. We'll be fine. I think they're moving away now, anyway. I don't sense them so clearly.'

Yet Ted glanced away when he said this, and to Bobby he looked like a man trying to tell himself a story he can't quite believe. If the increasing frequency of his blank-outs meant anything, Bobby thought, he had good reason to look that way.

Stop it, the low men don't exist, they're no more real than Flash Gordon and Dale Arden. The things he asked you to look for are just . . .just things. Remember that, Bobby-0: just ordinary things.

With dinner cleared away, the two of them sat down to watch Bronco, with Ty Hardin. Not among the best of the so-called 'adult westerns' (Cheyenne and Maverick were the best), but not bad, either. Halfway through the show, Bobby let out a moderately loud fart. Ted's casserole had begun its work. He snuck a sideways glance to make sure Ted wasn't holding his nose and grimacing. Nope, just watching the television, seemingly absorbed.

When a commercial came on (some actress selling refrigerators), Ted asked if Bobby would like a glass of rootbeer. Bobby said okay. 'I thought I might help myself to one of the Alka-Seltzers I saw in the bathroom, Bobby. I may have eaten a bit too much.'