JT looked at the business card. He flipped it around. The back was blank. He flipped it back, and read it once more, for the one hundredth time.
Saturday. May 19. 8:27pm.
Stella Ct. and Healy Ave.
Bring the Banana.
DON’T BE LATE.
He looked at his watch. 8:19. It wasn’t like him to be early, for anything. Not even a minute. But he had been standing at the corner of Stella and Healy for nearly a half hour. The anticipation had been gnawing at him for days.
Rich had been across the Illinois border for about an hour. The tank was low. His vision was half focused. He was so tired it was physically painful. He hadn’t eaten all day. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. All that mattered was getting home. He almost forgot what home looked like-what it felt like and what it smelled like. Laura was a different story. He hadn’t forgotten what she felt like. Two months and three days, and he still knew every nook.
“Hey Dave. Dave! Tell Cindy that joke you told us at lunch.”
Dave popped up from his chair and looked up and over his cubicle. His face was contorted and his eyebrows high. He held the face for a beat, and then slowly disappeared behind the grey cubicle wall.
“What joke,” asked Dave?
“C’mon! The one about the doctor.”
“Oh, she doesn’t want to hear that one.”
“You be Tom, and I’ll be Huckleberry.”
“Huh,” shrugged Kevin?
“From Huckleberry Finn. You be Tom Sawyer, and I’ll be Huck.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Whatever,” said Daniel. “Just help me get this in the water.”
Kevin and Daniel shoved a homemade raft of twine and sticks into the small pond in the woods behind Kevin’s house. It fell apart as soon as it touched the water.
The old Royal Crown thermometer hung on the wall. It read 68 degrees, but it was by far the hottest day of the year. If this was going to happen for Gus, today was the day. He had sunk every last dollar he had into this, and if it failed, he didn’t know what he was going to do. He couldn’t think about it. Wondering what would happen if it failed was recipe for failure. His grandmother taught him that. When you believe in something, in yourself, you do it. You don’t wait, she’d say.
