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I gave her a look: Why me? Her glance flickered to Elena and George, and I saw that they were both looking at their hands, struggling. They weren’t ready yet, but somehow, because of everything that had happened in the last seventy-two hours, I was.

  “My wife had the most beautiful laugh you’ve ever heard,” I began, and told them our story: how we’d met, all the things I’d loved about her. It came much easier than when I’d told Elena; I wasn’t even fighting tears. I stopped before the storm, following Catherine’s lead. When I fell silent she gave me an approving nod, and I felt myself glowing like a fourth-grader who’d just gotten a gold star on his long division test.

  Elena glanced at George, but he was silent, so she took a deep breath and gave us Julio Santiago, Santa to his friends. Her voice thickened in a couple of places, but she managed to get through it. And when she finished and received her valedictory nod from Catherine, I saw her sit up a little straighter.

  “And then they died, all these wonderful people,” George said, startling us all. “One, two, three, and Shane makes four.” The bitterness and raw pain in his voice made me wince in sympathy.

  Addressing Elena and me, he said, “Did Catherine tell you how my beloved met his maker?” We nodded, both of us using the smallest possible motions of our heads. “It was my fault, in a way. When we first got together Shane was smoking a pack and a half a day. I’d watched my mother die of lung cancer, and I was always after him to quit. It took me two years of pestering and pleading, but he finally kicked it, and that’s when he started with the chewing gum. And it couldn’t just be any old gum, oh no, it had to be grape-flavored bubble gum—can you imagine? Like an eight-year-old kid. There was always a fat purple wad of it in his mouth. I came to hate it almost as much as the smoking. One day I lost my temper and told him it made him look like the trailer trash he was. He just laughed and said, ‘Well, you can’t blame a cracker for trying to do his forefathers proud.’

  George smiled sadly. “Shane didn’t take anything seriously, least of all himself. It was one of the main reasons I fell for him. Well, besides the obvious.” He gestured over his shoulder, in the direction of the portrait over the mantel. “I know what people thought when they saw us together: What could a hot young thing like him possibly want with an aging queer like me, besides money? And what could I possibly want with him, besides a hot young piece of tail? They might even have been right at the beginning, but they were wrong in the end. Shane was the love of my life, and I honestly believe I was the love of his.” George turned then, slowly, like he was being pulled against his will, and gazed up at the portrait with such naked longing I had to look away. “Goddamn gum,” he said.

  “Well at least it wasn’t a goddamn goat,” Catherine responded, just as heatedly. “Remember the story about how Cal refused to apologize? Well, he was the stubbornest person I ever knew. Once he’d made up his mind about something, Jesus on a white horse couldn’t have persuaded him to change it. Which might have been fine if there’d been a brain inside that hard head of his, but the fact is Cal couldn’t have poured piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. Don’t get me wrong, he was as sweet and loyal as they come, and I loved him to pieces. But God he was stupid.”

  Three jaws dropped, but Catherine didn’t seem to notice. “Cal believed anything he heard or read, and whatever version got to him first was the gospel truth. Obama’s a Muslim, they said so on Fox News. Aluminum foil causes Alzheimer’s. Stonehenge is an alien homing beacon. Fluoride is a form of mind control the government puts in our drinking water, and watch out because once enough of it builds up in your system you’ll do anything they say.”

  She let out a choked laugh, and her eyes filled with tears. “He’d been living alone on the farm for six months, ever since his wife Tiffany ran off with the satellite dish repair guy. She withdrew every cent of their savings from the bank on her way out of town, but she left her pet goat behind. Billy—original, huh? Cal never liked that thing. She’d treated it way better than she had him, and I figured he’d turn it into cabrito. Instead, my brother got one of his genius ideas. Called me up on the first of April all excited and told me he was in the process of creating a whole new breed of working animal—the Guard Goat—and that Billy was the prototype. A natural, Cal claimed, just like Tony Romo or Robert Redford in that movie. Once he’d had gotten Billy fully trained, Cal planned to patent his techniques and give ‘seminarials’ all over the country. If it had been anybody but my brother telling me this, I would have been waiting for the ‘April Fools!’ But I knew damn well he was serious. When I asked him what training a Guard Goat entailed, he got all mysterious on me, like I might reveal his secret methods to the breathlessly waiting world of potential Guard Goat breeders. I thought it was hilarious, typical Cal. I wished him luck, told him I loved him and hung up the phone. Three weeks later he was dead. When I went to the house I found all these library books on training techniques for military attack dogs. Basically he’d been teaching this goat to be Rambo—in German. All the commands were in German, and he’d circled some of them and put little notes to himself in the margins, like ‘Say it like you mean it!’ and ‘Remember YOU are the top goat!’”

  Catherine was crying hard now, struggling to get the words out. “He was right, that goat was a prodigy. Either that or it had just had enough of Cal’s bad Hitler impersonations, because one day it turned on him and killed him. Butted him thirty-seven times. You know how I know that? Because he captured the whole thing on film.” She started rocking herself, sobbing, but as she went on the sounds changed, and the sobs turned to hysterical laughter. “There’s Commandant Cal in his desert fatigue pants and combat boots, standing in the goat pen with this big male with these big honking horns. Cal’s giving it hand signals,” Catherine made karate-chop motions with her hands, “and barking orders at it in atrociously accented German: ‘Achtung!’ ‘Setz!’ And at first the goat’s actually obeying. It’s paying attention, it’s sitting, it’s staying and going down on command, and you can see Cal swelling up with pride, thinking about all the money he’s going to make off his seminarials and imagining the look on Tiffany’s face when she realizes the gold mine she foolishly walked away from. Then Cal points to a stuffed dummy a few feet away and says, ‘Fass!’ which means ‘Attack!’ and the goat’s like Sieg heil! but instead of charging the dummy it charges Cal and butts him in the thigh, wham! And Cal goes down, flat on his back. For a minute he’s just lying there in a daze, and then he sits up and rubs his leg and looks at the goat with this wounded expression on his face. ‘What the heck, Billy?’ he says. ‘That hurt.’ And the goat paws the ground and charges him and butts him in the shoulder, wham! ‘Hey!’ Cal yells. He’s hopping mad now, his face is bright red and he’s practically got steam coming out of his ears. ‘Oh, you’ve done it now, mister,’ he tells the goat as he struggles to his feet. ‘You’ve crossed the line now.’

  Catherine stopped, gasping for air, laughing so hard she could barely speak. “Cal draws himself up and puffs his chest out, by God he’s going to show that goat who’s boss, and he’s shouting ‘Setz!’ and ‘Platz!’ and making his patent-pending Guard Goat hand signals. But the goat doesn’t want to sit or go down, what it wants to do is fass. This time Cal dodges it, yelling, ‘Nein, Billy! Nein!’ but the goat’s not having it, oh no, it’s trained too long and hard for this moment, and it butts him again, wham! And Cal goes back down. He tries to get up but he can’t, his legs won’t support him, and he’s sitting there hollering every German word he can think of. Meanwhile the goat’s in full battle mode, and it butts him again, wham! So Cal points his finger at it and in his sternest voice, pulls out his last-ditch ace in the hole: ‘Bad goat! Baaaad goat!’ Wham! Wham!”

  It was horrible; it was funny as shit. Catherine was doubled over, and tears and snot were streaming down her face. I couldn’t help it, I started laughing too, and then Elena joined in and then George, and before long we were all howling and clutching our bellies. “Bad goat! Wham!�
�� Catherine cried, and I shouted, “Volkswagen! Wham!” At which point it turned into a free-for-all: “Dachsund! Wham!” “Frankfurter! Wham!” “Lederhosen! Wham!”

  Eventually we subsided, the howls turning into sheepish chortles that would soon fade into shamed silence; we could all sense it coming. Catherine looked like she was about to start crying again.

  “I read about these two guys in Ireland,” Elena said. “They were driving on a country road, going in opposite directions, and the fog was so incredibly thick and the insides of their windshields were so covered with condensation they couldn’t see a thing, so both of them had their heads stuck out the window.” She demonstrated, wrapping her hands around an imaginary steering wheel, craning her neck to one side and squinting. “And then—” She smacked her hands together, front to back.

  “No,” I said, already laughing.

  “They decapitated each other!”

  Hilarity: shrieking, roaring, belly clutching.

  “Okay, I’ve got another one,” George said. “There was this zookeeper in Germany tending a constipated elephant. He’d dosed it with laxatives and fed it a whole bunch of prunes, but nothing was working. He was trying to give it an enema when it finally let loose. The eruption knocked the zookeeper over. He struck his head, passed out and drowned in a sea of elephant shit.”

  More uproar. My sides felt like someone was taking a machete to them. I couldn’t remember ever laughing so hard in all my life. “Did you see the one about the stripper?” I gasped. Three head shakes. “She was working a bachelor party, and they put her inside one of those big fake cardboard cakes. The toasting went on for a long while, and then the best man finally cued the music.” I sang it: “Da dum bum bum, da dum bum bum. But she didn’t appear. Thinking she might have fallen asleep, he knocked on the side of the cake, but still no stripper.”

  “She’d suffocated in there, right?” said Elena in a small voice.

  It was horrible; it wasn’t the least bit funny. Suddenly no one was laughing anymore, and we were all looking anywhere but at each other. Catherine hiccuped and started crying again. “I’m a terrible human being,” she said. “We’re all terrible.”

  “No you’re not,” I said. “You needed that. We all did.” Silence from the others. “Didn’t we?” I asked, elbowing Elena.

  “Yes, we did,” she said, and I could tell she meant it. George seconded her, then produced a handkerchief and passed it to Catherine. She wiped her face, blew her nose and crumpled the cloth in her fist.

  “It’s just so ridiculous,” she said. “I mean, for crying out loud. Butted to death? Hic! Kneaded to death? Immolated because you blew a bubble? Electrocuted by your bra?”

  We sat there quietly for a moment, collecting ourselves, and then Catherine asked where the restroom was. George escorted her out, and Elena went with them. Izzy came over and jumped up without invitation onto George’s immaculate white upholstery, and I let him settle his head in my lap. The pugs might be apoplectic when they smelled him later, but I didn’t think our host would mind.

  The three of them returned, George carrying a pitcher of fresh Bloodies. He filled all our glasses, then lifted his own.

  “To Cal,” George said.

  “And Santa,” Catherine said, lifting hers.

  “And Jess,” Elena said.

  “And Shane,” I said, full circle.

  We drank and made awkward, sporadic small talk, like the kind you make with a stranger you had sex with the night before who ended up spending the night instead of leaving afterward like they were supposed to. I finished my drink in record time and looked inquiringly at Elena. She nodded and we stood.

  “We’re going to get going,” I said. “Catherine, can we give you a lift to the airport?”

  “My flight’s not till tomorrow,” she replied, “but you can drop me at my hotel. I made a reservation at a B and B on the Battery.”

  “It’s pronounced ‘BAT-tree’, my dear,” said George, “and it’s an overpriced tourist trap. I wouldn’t dream of letting you stay there, or anywhere but here with me.” When she protested, he added, “Please, I’d be glad of the company.”

  That settled, they walked us outside and we said our good-byes, promising to stay in touch. This time, somehow, the words didn’t feel empty. Maybe because this time, neither did I.

  “CHUNKY MONKEY OR Cherry Garcia?” I ask.

  “Chunky Monkey,” Elena says. “Captain Picard or Captain Kirk?”

  “Kirk.”

  “Ennhhh. Wrong answer. Opera or ballet?”

  “Baseball,” I say. “Mets or Yankees?

  “Yankees. Thai or Indian?”

  “Mexican,” I say.

  “Ding ding ding!”

  We’re about halfway to New York, and Elena’s driving. I’m just a passenger, zipping along toward God knows what fate—but then, so are you. You may think you know what’s going to happen in my story or your own, but the truth is you don’t have a clue. You’re right here with me, off the map. Here, for all you know, there be dragons.

  “Paris or Rome?” I ask.

  “Haven’t been to either.”

  “So which one would you like to see first?”

  Elena shoots me a look. I don’t know her well enough yet to read it, though I know her a whole lot better after last night. Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m skipping the love scene, or should I say scenes. Suffice it to say the first one was a tearjerker, and the three that followed would have had to be severely edited to make NC-17.

  “What did you say to George on the porch?” she asks, surprising me. I didn’t think she’d been paying attention to us.

  “That would be the veraaandah. And you haven’t answered my question.”

  “You first.”

  I shrug, smile. “I just wished him luck, is all.”

  Elena isn’t fooled, but she lets it go for now. “Rome,” she says.

  EXT. GEORGE’S VERANDAH - DAY

  Elena and CATHERINE, 45, are hugging and saying tearful good-byes in Spanish. Michael and GEORGE, 50ish, are standing off to one side.

  GEORGE

  Thank you for coming, Michael.

  MICHAEL

  You can’t imagine how much I didn’t want to, but I’m glad I did.

  They shake hands. Michael considers George, wrestling with something, and comes to a decision.

  MICHAEL (CONT’D)

  There’s something I want to say to you, George, and you’re not going to believe me and you might even be pissed at me for saying it. But you need to hear it and I need to say it, so here goes. You don’t know that Shane was the love of your life.

  George looks affronted and starts to speak, but Michael plows ahead.

  MICHAEL (CONT’D)

  You can’t know that he was the love of your life, and do you know why? Because guess what, you aren’t dead yet. You may feel dead right now, and believe me I’ve been there, but the fact is, until you’re lying under a tombstone of your own you can’t be sure about anything. You could prick your finger on one of your roses tomorrow, and as you’re climbing the stairs to get a Band-Aid you trip over one of the pugs and tumble to your death. Or you could meet a man in the checkout line at the grocery store--hell, you could meet a woman even, and fall madly in love with her and end up with six kids and twenty grandkids.

  Michael looks over at Elena, then back at George.

  MICHAEL (CONT’D)

  You just don’t know, George. That’s the thing. None of us does.

  He reaches out and rests his hand for a moment on George’s shoulder, then lets it fall.

  INT. MICHAEL’S CAR - DAY

  Elena and Michael driving down the highway with the top down. She’s behind the wheel, and she’s got her head thrown back, LAUGHING at something he just said. She stops, and he cocks his head.

  MICHAEL

  Do you hear that?

  ELENA

  What?

  Faintly at first, and then gradually louder, we hear a woman’
s LAUGH: artless, weightless, utterly abandoned. A bright, rippling arpeggio from the most joyful aria ever sung. Michael smiles.

  MICHAEL

  Nothing.

  The LAUGHTER continues as the car heads off into the unknown.

  FADE OUT.

  Also by HILLARY JORDAN

  When She Woke

  Mudbound

  MICHAEL EPSTEIN

  Hillary Jordan is the author of Mudbound and When She Woke. Mudbound was awarded the 2006 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, founded by Barbara Kingsolver, and a 2009 Alex Award from the American Library Association. It was the 2008 NAIBA Fiction Book of the Year, was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize, and was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover title and a Borders Original Voices selection. It has been translated into French, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, and Serbian. When She Woke was a #1 Indie Next pick and a Booklist Editor’s Choice for Best Books of 2011. It has been translated into French, Spanish, and Turkish; German, Brazilian, and Chinese editions are forthcoming. Jordan received her BA from Wellesley College in 1984 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2004. She lives in Brooklyn. Find her online at www.hillaryjordan.com.

  Published by

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2012 by Hillary Jordan.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN 978-1-61620-303-0