Regina’s Song

“I’ll give Mark a hand with the rest of his lumber,” Charlie said. “Then you can show me where to flop.”

“Don’t let him get away, Mark,” Erika told me with a peculiar fierceness.

“Those are a couple of spooky ladies,” Charlie said, while we carried the rest of my boards around to the side.

“Swedish girls lean toward intensity,” I agreed.

After we’d finished, Trish gave Charlie the tour. He only glanced briefly into the room across the hall from mine. “It’ll do,” he said almost indifferently. “I’ll go back to Enumclaw and pick up my junk. Would it be OK if I put my tools in that basement room where Mark’s got his lumber? I don’t want to leave them in my truck. Good tools fetch fancy prices in pawnshops, so I don’t want to take chances on having somebody swipe them. If it’s OK, I’ll move in on Monday.”

“That’s fine with me, Charlie,” Trish told him.

“Would you mind if I painted the room?” he asked then. “Pink walls aren’t my scene.”

“It’s your room,” Trish told him. “Pick any color you like.”

I spent the morning in the basement staining the boards, then I went to a hardware store and bought those lock screws Charlie had mentioned, came back, and started installing the shelves. It went quite a bit faster than I’d thought it would, and I was better than halfway through the job when I knocked off for the day.

I called Miss Mary’s house when I got back to the motel, and Twink answered the phone. “Where have been, Markie?” she demanded. “I tried to call you four times today.”

“I was building bookshelves. Are you all right?”

“I was just lonesome, that’s all. I thought that maybe we could go to a movie or something.”

“Is there anything showing that you’d like to see?”

“Not really. I’d just like to get out for a while.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

“I was going to pop a TV dinner into the microwave.”

“Why don’t I take you out to dinner instead?”

“That’d be nice.”

“I’ll take a shower and change clothes. I’ll be there in about forty-five minutes, OK?”

“Anything you say, Markie.”

I realized that I’d been neglecting Twink for the past few days. I’d been busy, of course, but that was no real excuse.

I took her to a Chinese restaurant, and we pigged out on sweet-and-sour pork. Then we sat over tea and talked until the restaurant closed. Twinkie seemed relaxed and even quite confident. She was coming right along.

I was certain that I’d finish up the shelves and the painting on Friday, so I’d only have one more night in the motel before I’d be able to settle into my own room.

I got up fairly early and started painting as soon as I got to the Erd-lund house. I wanted the paint to be good and dry before I moved in my furniture.

James stuck his head in through the doorway about noon. “Baby blue,” he noted.

“I’m just a growing boy,” I replied.

“Sure, kid. Who’s this Charlie guy the girls are all up in the air about?”

“He’s an aerospace engineer who works for Boeing. His hobby is cars, and that made the Erdlund girls wiggle like puppies.”

“Is Boeing really paying him to go to school? Or is he just blowing smoke in everybody’s ears?”

“I think he’s giving us the straight scoop. He’s a sort of slob who quotes obscure passages from Shakespeare and knows more about the Italian Renaissance than you’d expect from an engineer. He’s a sharp one, that’s for sure. He’ll be moving in on Monday, and then you can judge for yourself.”

“Nobody ever offered to buy me an education.”

“We’re in the wrong fields, James.”

“It looks like you’re almost finished,” he observed.

“Three more shelves on top, then it’s all done.”

“Do you really have that many books?”

“Not quite, but I’m giving myself room for expansion. When you major in English, your library grows like a well-watered weed. I’ll get those last few shelves installed as soon as I finish painting. I want to polish it all off before the local U-Haul place closes. I’ll rent a truck this afternoon and bag on up to Everett first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll go along,” he rumbled. “Loading furniture into a truck is a two-man job.”

“I was sort of hoping you might make that offer,” I said, grinning at him.

“Have you got everything up there all packed?”

“It’s ready to roll.” Then I went back to painting.

I finished up by midafternoon, and then I went to the U-Haul place and rented a truck.

James and I got an early start the next morning. It was Saturday, and of course it was raining. It always rains on weekends, or had you noticed? Monday through Friday can be sunny and bright, but come Saturday, you get rain. James and I talked a bit on the way north, and James told me that he’d started at the university after his wife had died of cancer. “I needed something to distract me,” he said rather shortly. He clearly didn’t want to go into any greater detail.

There was an awkward silence for a while as we drove past Lynnwood through the steady drizzle.

“What got you into English, Mark?” he asked finally.

“Dumb luck, probably.” I launched into a description of my years at the community college and my early major in “everything.”

“You sound like a throwback to the Renaissance—Mark da Vinci, maybe, or possibly Mark Borgia.”

“It was an interesting time, that’s for sure. Isn’t that an old Chinese curse? ‘May you live in interesting times’?”

“I seem to have heard that.”

“I was just dabbling, James,” I explained. “I wasn’t even working toward a degree—I took courses in anything that sounded interesting. What got you into philosophy?”

He shrugged. “The usual stuff—’The meaning of life,’ or the lack thereof.” He seemed to hesitate a moment. “It’s none of my business, but how is it that a young fellow who works for a living came to own a house? That usually doesn’t come along until quite a bit later.”