She was standing in the hallway just inside the door, a bottle of beer in hand. She was perhaps in her mid-thirties, her brown, shoulder-length hair tied back in a ponytail and wearing a floral print dress that seemed at odds with the beer bottle. But as I would soon learn, defying expectations was one of Madeline Montgomery’s more appealing traits. She was undeniably attractive, but not in a conventional way. It was something about the playful light in her eyes, the casual confidence she gave off, that weird feeling you get when you just know you’re going to get along with someone, almost like you’ve known each other all your lives, or perhaps even in a past one. And there was that laugh… yes that laugh that came again when I stood there in silence, staring at her.
“Hello? Harry? Earth to Harry?” She grinned. She waved a hand in front of my eyes. “Is there anybody in there?”
“Um, yes. Hi. Hello.”
“We covered that already.” She held out her free hand for me to shake. “And it’s nice to meet you. You own the hardware store, right?”
“That’s right.” I juggled the six-pack and the bag of snacks from the general store in one hand. Her palm was cool and soft. “And you’re the new… math teacher?” I was trying to recall my conversation with Maggie, but conversations with Maggie always turn pretty fuzzy in my head.
“That’s correct,” she said. “A-plus for you.”
I beamed like a schoolboy at her approval, then felt kinda stupid.
“Well, don’t just stand there,” Andy said. “We’ve got a poker game to start.”
The screened-in porch at the back of the house doubled as Andy’s poker room in spring and summer, while in autumn and winter he moved the game to his dining room. The porch had everything we needed to get us through a night of card -playing: a fridge in the corner for the beer, a microwave for heating up popcorn, a TV on the wall for whichever Friday night game was playing at the time, and an old stereo that was currently belting out Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself.” Andy loved a seventies power ballad. Who didn’t? Oh, and let’s not forget the ice chest beside the fridge that was topped up for whiskey on the rocks later in the night… or earlier, depending on who was having the worst losing streak. Trucker Ted always seemed to be first to break open the whiskey.
Ted was the one whose place at the table Madeline had taken that night.
Andy explained that Ted had been called out on the road, covering a haul while Bo Harlow was busy doing a run from Minneapolis to Albuquerque. While filling up on gas, Andy had bumped into Madeline. They introduced themselves, got to talking about weekend plans… Andy mentioned Dean’s arrival on Saturday, and of course his Friday night poker game. According to the story, Madeline’s face lit up—evidently she loved poker—Andy told her they were one player down that Friday, and before they knew it, Madeline was invited to the game.
“You take Ted’s seat,” Andy said to Madeline, pointing to the chair next to mine.
Madeline looked from the chair to me and smiled. “Don’t mind if I do.”
* * *
On poker nights, we each had our seat.
I always sat with my back to the main part of the house, looking out the back-porch screen to Andy’s backyard, as well as the shed at the end of the drive that Dean had converted into his own live-in music studio when he left school at eighteen. He had his own bedroom set up in that space, as well as some recording equipment and a small kitchenette and bathroom that made the shed completely self-contained.
Between the ages of eighteen and nineteen -and -a -half—when one of his YouTube recordings was discovered by a big entertainment label in LA—Dean would spend days, sometimes weeks in his studio, writing and recording music, stepping out into the real world only when he needed food supplies or to clear the jumble of musical notes and lyrics in his brain. That shed became his retreat, his haven, his creative sanctuary. He was Aladdin, and that shed was his Cave of Wonders where he conjured up treasure after treasure.
It was shortly after his eighteenth birthday when my view of Dean changed. Completely.
He had always been a good kid, the creative if not somewhat reclusive son of my best friend. He always did what his dad asked, he was a good student and never got himself into trouble. He seemed to be liked well enough by the other kids at school, but he never really seemed to hang out with any friends. His guitar, his songs, his music, they were his best buddies. They were the company he preferred to keep. It was evident, even as a teenager, that they were his life.
But then one summer night after his eighteenth birthday, while sitting there playing poker with the boys, I looked up to see Dean step out of his shed to get some air and gather his thoughts.
His guitar was slung over his shoulder and suddenly I noticed his back had broadened.
He was wearing a tight-fitting T-shirt, one that hugged his firm young biceps, and as he plucked quietly at his guitar strings trying to find the right chord, I watched his youthful muscles flex.
His shorts were tighter, as though his thighs were growing out of them.
He seemed taller, his torso toned, his once pimply jaw now strong, square, and in need of a shave.
The quiet, gangly kid was gone, and in his place stood a young man who—with every twang and strum of his guitar—suddenly tugged relentlessly at the heartstrings inside me.
Every Friday night from then on until the day LA whisked him away, I would play poker with one eye on my cards and one eye on that shed, hoping he’d step outside with his guitar, even if only for the briefest moment, so I could get a glimpse of him in the hope it would get me through another week.
It wasn’t long before I figured out a guaranteed way of not only catching sight of him, but actually talking to him, face to face.
There were two bathrooms at Andy’s: one was inside the house, the other was inside Dean’s shed.
One night we paused the game so that Norm could go relieve himself. It was a well-known fact that Norm’s trips to the bathroom were no short affair, given his age and the time it took him to shake it all out.
“Actually, I gotta go as well,” I said one night, polishing off my fourth bottle as if to hammer home the message. “Do you think Dean would mind if I used his?”
