Summerlong by Dean Bakopoulos Page B

lights.”
    “So, how long will you stay in Grinnell?” ABC says. She feels the urge to ask Charlie something easy and concrete, in an attempt to ground herself. She feels as if she’s floating. She needs to be distracted from this wave of grief.
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s your next role?”
    The small talk is almost too much. She wants to communicate in a different way.
    “I told you. I’m done acting! Are you okay, kiddo?”
    She wipes her forehead, her hands almost shaking. “I can’t believe how much I’m sweating!”
    “Well, it’s hot.”
    “Right? But gross! Look at me?”
    He smiles at her. She feels the beads forming on her face. Her stomach sinks. She is feeling the intensity of her grief as if it is brand new.
    “You look good.”
    “Do you really think you’re done?”
    “How are you not done after Hamlet?”
    “Sometimes I feel like I am finished too. Like after Philly there isn’t anything left.”
    They say nothing for a minute and ABC sort of paces around the kitchen, looking out the windows at the view. Charlie just stares at her. She moves slowly, fingering the sills, and then she whips around and does a little jazz hand move and says, almost singing, “This is when you tell me I have so much to live for, I think.”
    Charlie smiles. “I can’t do that. I don’t know if it’s true.”
    “I knew I liked you!” ABC says. “You’re the first honest person I’ve met in a long time. Let’s play a game. Let’s make a list.” She finds a scrap of paper and a pen near the fridge. She notices the scrap of paper is a page from a notepad with Don Lowry’s picture on the bottom. It’s your home, but it’s my business! She sees on the fridge that Charlie has already made a list, last item: Fuck Claire.
    She thinks of Philly, tries not to shudder. “So, what do you have to live for, Charlie Gulliver?”
    “Um, well. I’m going to clean out my dad’s study and finish my dad’s book, you know, get it so it can be published.”
    “Do you care if it gets published?”
    “Ha! No!” Charlie says. “I guess not. But you heard him—Ithink he still does. I mean, he didn’t know who the fuck I was, but he talked about his work. And he remembered you!”
    “I was one of his favorite students,” ABC says. “And that was less than two years ago. You’ve been away, what? How long?”
    “He always preferred his work.”
    “You know, it’s not weird that he didn’t recognize you. Dementia, especially this kind, is so unpredictable.”
    “Please tell me you didn’t fuck him,” Charlie says.
    “God! No! I was with Philly in college.”
    “He probably wanted to fuck you.”
    “Well, he probably did. If I am honest about it. Wouldn’t you want to fuck me?”
    “Why don’t you finish his book for him? Weren’t you an English major? He was your adviser, I bet.”
    “He was.”
    “There you go! You finish the book!” Charlie says.
    “Look, of course it’s unfair if his life’s work goes unpublished,” ABC says, “but it’s not a rare thing. How many people die with novels in their drawers? You’re under no obligation to finish his unfinished work.”
    “I’m curious to read it,” Charlie says. “For my own sake; I barely knew the guy.”
    “Why? I don’t think you should do it unless you feel it gives you meaning and purpose in the world.”
    “Oh, sex does that for me. This is just a way to kill time between sexual encounters.”
    “Funny,” ABC says. “Very flirty.”
    “You think I have nothing to live for,” Charlie says. “That’s what you’re saying.”
    “I want to be dead by the end of the summer so I can find Philly in the spirit world.”
    “Seriously?” he asks. “Why do you keep saying shit like that?”
    “Because I mean it,” she says.
    ABC likes the wavering edge in Charlie’s voice and the way he pushes his beer bottle back and forth across the kitchen table. She always liked Professor Gulliver a great deal, but had often