looking past his left shoulder toward Michael Andersen, Bloomfield’s one-time quarterback, with whom she had performed all sorts of delectable acts in the back seat of a 1968 Ford Fairlane, at least according to rumor.
“So, what are you running for this time?” Friedman asked Wharton. “Board of Chosen Freeloaders?”
“That’s Freeholders,” said Wharton, his sense of humor sharp as ever. “And no, this time it’s State Senate. There are too many issues. . .”
“Spare me the campaign rhetoric,” I suggested. “I can always look it up on your web site, Whart. Besides, I don’t even live in your district.”
“You could move.”
Friedman rolled his eyes. “Nothing ever changes,” he said. “You still expect us to get you elected.” Wharton’s eyes narrowed. That one stung. It’s a long story, involving a stuffed ballot box in a student council election. And even though the statute of limitations has in all probability run out, it’s probably better left untold.
Before a fistfight could break out, I gestured to Mahoney. Stephanie was walking away. Mahoney bit his lower lip, but walked over to us anyway.
“Well, look who it is,” said Wharton. “Jerry Mahogany.”
“Knucklehead Smiff,” Mahoney answered, completing the ritual. The reference to the Paul Winchell Show was a long-standing bit between the two of them. They didn’t shake hands, but nodded at each other.
I recognized about twenty percent of the people in the room, and discounting for spouses, that still gave me a woefully low batting average. No one approached us—and I almost gave a long-lost-friend greeting to a man who turned out to be the bartender.
Still, the four of us—Mahoney, Friedman, Wharton and Tucker (that’s me)—managed to create a mini-reunion in our corner of the room. Old jokes, half-forgotten, were dragged out and given one more road test. Stories that were three-quarters forgotten (at least by me) were retold and embellished. Facts were disputed, opinions dismissed, and current lives and families, not to mention the past quarter century, completely ignored. And when Alan McGregor was spotted walking through the door, our mini-group was complete.
Mahoney, who had jump-started his sense of humor and assumed his customary court jester role, bellowed from across the room: “McGregor!” Heads turned. No one cared. McGregor reddened a bit, but walked over to us, smiling.
McGregor is about the same height as Mahoney, but not as muscular. He looks more like Clark Kent, and less like Superman.
In our group, no one member was more important than the rest, but it wouldn’t have been “Us” without McGregor. He provided the humanity in a gang of four who would have gone for the throat for the sake of a joke had he not been present. He also held his own, providing puns that would send lesser men running from the room.
He had barely caught up with the rest of the group (wife, three kids, some sort of financial job I didn’t understand) when I spotted a short, trim woman with casually coiffed brown hair standing by herself in a corner, nursing a ginger ale. I must have gasped audibly, because Mahoney turned in her direction, and broke into the nastiest grin I’d seen on his face in six months.
“Gail Rayburn,” he said, and the whole group turned first to her, then to me. I felt like my face was giving off heat beams. And they were enjoying my discomfort immensely.
Gail Rayburn, who had been considered something of a hot number during our tenure at Bloomfield High, had inexplicably decided one week during our senior year to make me her pet project. She found me at a party at Bobby Fox’s house, seduced me in some subtle way the beer wouldn’t allow me to remember (like saying “come here”), and then given me my first—and to date, last—hickey, a 24-karat beauty that I’d worn proudly for close to a week. She had, of course, then moved on to someone else, leaving me to look foolish, which was not unusual for me in high school, and continues to be not unusual for me to this day.
“You ought to go over and say hello,” said Wharton.
“Too bad you’re not wearing a turtleneck,” Friedman added. “Your wife might find out.”
“Don’t go over,” McGregor chimed in. “You don’t want to stick your neck out.”
I looked at Mahoney. “Why’d we come to this thing, again?” I asked.
“I’m having a good time,” he said. It occurred to me that he’d started having a good time when I started being the object of ridicule, but hey, what are best friends for?
I assessed them