dream house, the model home he could show buyers. One look and they’d come swarming to invest. He laid down octagonal tile sidewalks and convinced the city to pave the streets with red brick an unfortunate six weeks before the Florida real estate crash. It came a full five years before the national stock market tanked: an event that was anticlimactic down here, where land is everything.
Herman’s brick streets are overgrown now, and jungle has reclaimed all his vacant lots. Most of his stony sentinels were stolen or vandalized and the ones that survive are decaying, all but the two flanking the Fourth Street approach to Pine Vista and the ones in front of his dream house. Grandfather kept them in mint condition until he died, at which point Bobby’s father took over, which Bobby is expected to do. Like Bobby, the lions look tired; they’ve been doing what they’re doing for too long.
Like Bobby, they need a change.
He isn’t out here looking for Nenna, exactly, but it would be nice to talk to her. He’d like to know what brought her by here the other day, and why she was walking. The woman looked like she could use a little there-there – which he is happy to give, if she’ll only tell him what’s wrong. He isn’t out front waiting for her, but there’s always a chance that she’ll come by and they can talk.
Not that there isn’t plenty to do. He’s yanking sandspurs out of whatever Bermuda grass remains in the doomed front lawn. Unlike his grandfather, who took to weeding the walks all the way up to Fourth Street, Bobby is not crazy, nor is he going there. He has responsibilities.
Until he lost his grip, Herman Chaplin saw to it that the pink-and-gray octagons in the front walk were lifted and leveled every year. Then Bobby’s father did. His parents died gratefully, like relieved commanders turning over the helm of a doomed ship. Bobby sees to it now. As the only functional Chaplin, he sees to a lot of things. His siblings aren’t fit to go out.
He wishes Nenna had let him help last week, she was so harassed. Lovely woman, looking maybe a tad old for her age – which is his age, more or less, they were in the same year all through school. Little Nenna was at the graduation house parties out at Huntington Beach, at the ruinous end of senior year at FJHS.
It was awful; he’s never had more fun. Until the end.
That June he and Chape Bellinger and Brad Kalen, Stitch Von Harten and Buck Coleman stayed free in a condo Chape’s aunt was stupid enough to loan. He remembers they promised to keep their feet off the furniture, which was covered in flowered chintz; there were all these little china things around and he remembers waking up on the pink shag rug with broken china mashed into his cheek but that’s all he remembers because they were loaded for a solid calendar week.
They ran around until the sun came up and then you slept until three and got up and ran around all night, ingesting whatever until everybody was bombed into insensibility. Then they fell into Chape’s Jeep and roared up and down the beach until the sun came up; at low tide the sand was packed that hard. They tore along screaming, scattering early morning walkers like gulls. Every condo and cottage on Huntington Beach was full that week; kids from five Suncoast high schools converged, so the people you fell down with just outside the circle of the bonfire weren’t always people you knew.
Cathy Rhue had her folks’ beach house for the week, she was famous for her body. She brought all the usual girls. Betsy Cashwell and the cheerleaders rented a cabana at the DelMar, everybody who was anybody came to Huntington Beach. Sexy Jessie Vukovich was there, but nobody knew where she was staying. Even Lucy came, but not until the last night, her grandmother was that repressive. His heart turns over whenever he thinks of Lucy, which he tries not to do. He slipped his tiny gold football into her hand after the May crowning but she never mentioned it. Everybody but Lucy was there for the week, and there were parties every night. Nenna Henderson was there, he thinks, but in the background, because she wasn’t famous for anything. Not that they weren’t all pretty. In high school certain elements gave you distinction and everyone