Full dark,no stars

Yard? It’s not a yard, it’s a Shopping Channel fan’s idea of heaven.

There was even a fountain with a marble child standing in the middle of it. Somehow it was the bare-ass cherub (pissing, of course) that offended Streeter the most. He was sure it had been Norma’s idea-she had gone back to college to get a liberal arts degree, and had half-assed Classical pretensions-but still, to see such a thing here in the dying glow of a perfect Maine evening and know its presence was a result of Tom’s garbage monopoly…

And, speak of the devil (or the Elvid, if you like that better, Streeter thought), enter the Garbage King himself, with the necks of two sweating bottles of Spotted Hen Microbrew caught between the fingers of his left hand. Slim and erect in his open-throated Oxford shirt and faded jeans, his lean face perfectly lit by the sunset glow, Tom Goodhugh looked like a model in a magazine beer ad. Streeter could even see the copy: Live the good life, reach for a Spotted Hen.

“Thought you might like a fresh one, since your beautiful wife says she’s driving.”

“Thanks.” Streeter took one of the bottles, tipped it to his lips, and drank. Pretentious or not, it was good.

As Goodhugh sat down, Jacob the football player came out with a plate of cheese and crackers. He was as broad-shouldered and handsome as Tom had been back in the day. Probably has cheerleaders crawling all over him, Streeter thought. Probably has to beat them off with a damn stick.

“Mom thought you might like these,” Jacob said.

“Thanks, Jake. You going out?”

“Just for a little while. Throw the Frisbee with some guys down in the Barrens until it gets dark, then study.”

“Stay on this side. There’s poison ivy down there since the crap grew back.”

“Yeah, we know. Denny caught it when we were in junior high, and it was so bad his mother thought he had cancer.”

“Ouch!” Streeter said.

“Drive home carefully, son. No hot-dogging.”

“You bet.” The boy put an arm around his father and kissed his cheek with a lack of self-consciousness that Streeter found depressing. Tom not only had his health, a still-gorgeous wife, and a ridiculous pissing cherub; he had a handsome eighteen-year-old son who still felt all right about kissing his dad goodbye before going out with his best buds.

“He’s a good boy,” Goodhugh said fondly, watching Jacob mount the stairs to the house and disappear inside. “Studies hard and makes his grades, unlike his old man. Luckily for me, I had you.”

“Lucky for both of us,” Streeter said, smiling and putting a goo of Brie on a Triscuit. He popped it into his mouth.

“Does me good to see you eating, chum,” Goodhugh said. “Me n Norma were starting to wonder if there was something wrong with you.”

“Never better,” Streeter said, and drank some more of the tasty (and no doubt expensive) beer. “I’ve been losing my hair in front, though. Jan says it makes me look thinner.”

“That’s one thing the ladies don’t have to worry about,” Goodhugh said, and stroked a hand back through his own locks, which were as full and rich as they had been at eighteen. Not a touch of gray in them, either. Janet Streeter could still look forty on a good day, but in the red light of the declining sun, the Garbage King looked thirty-five. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink to excess, and he worked out at a health club that did business with Streeter’s bank but which Streeter could not afford himself. His middle child, Carl, was currently doing the European thing with Justin Streeter, the two of them traveling on Carl Goodhugh’s dime. Which was, of course, actually the Garbage King’s dime.

O man who has everything, thy name is Goodhugh, Streeter thought, and smiled at his old friend.

His old friend smiled back, and touched the neck of his beer bottle to Streeter’s. “Life is good, wouldn’t you say?”

“Very good,” Streeter agreed. “Long days and pleasant nights.”

Goodhugh raised his eyebrows. “Where’d you get that?”

“Made it up, I guess,” Streeter said. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“If it is, I owe a lot of my pleasant nights to you,” Goodhugh said. “It has crossed my mind, old buddy, that I owe you my life.” He toasted his insane backyard. “The tenderloin part of it, anyway.”

“Nah, you’re a self-made man.”

Goodhugh lowered his voice and spoke confidentially. “Want the truth? The woman made this man. The Bible says ‘Who can find a good woman? For her price is above rubies.’ Something like that, anyway. And you introduced us. Don’t know if you remember that.”

Streeter felt a sudden and almost irresistible urge to smash his beer bottle on the patio bricks and shove the jagged and still foaming neck into his old friend’s eyes. He smiled instead, sipped a little more beer, then stood up. “Think I need to pay a little visit to the facility.”

“You don’t buy beer, you only rent it,” Goodhugh said, then burst out laughing. As if he had invented this himself, right on the spot.

“Truer words, et cetera,” Streeter said. “Excuse me.”

“You really are looking better,” Goodhugh called after him as Streeter mounted the steps.