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Arcania. That's where I'd like to go, I say and thrust my foot into a
bug-filled light-circle.
 He stops too. You mean Arcadia.
Arcadia, arcania, academia, I say to show I know that they relate. You
can't be too smart with him. Any less, he cuts you, he leaves you with a
Fred.
He is dwelling now on a car coming, a car that could be someone's our age
although only a few can drive yet--ten. He dwells instead. He likes the
front page look of everything when you walk, headlights skimming porches, a
pink hat on a President's wife on a guttered paper, someone our age caught in
front of a coplight. Arcadia High, he says as the car widens itself, driving
toward us.
The frontseat Linda waves, the backseat Linda and Bart don't, they are
kissing, the windows down enough to see this.
We wave but we don't kiss. His face is too wide for a kiss, so wide and
long an extra chin or less hair is just about to happen. This is not to say
I haven't had the want. Arcadia High, the way he says it, with a curled lip,
I could kiss. He is the only one who dares to walk when he could ride.
Is that a Chevy? I ask, after the tail lights jump at the school grids.
Out comes that curled lip--this time for me. Of course. All cars are
Chevies, all men are animals. It's called synecdoche, the thing is the sum
of its parts, ergo, a Chevy is all cars.
It was really a Fred question is what he meant. How about death? I
counter. All deaths are what?
Too soon, he says. Arcane.
The bugs in the light pool rise up in attraction. Only this, and not the
car and its passing, disturb them. Their hot wings chop the light, then they
fall on their casings to the asphalt.
Arcane defines us. Let the Lindas drive by. They do not even know its
meaning, the way it applies.
When I die, he says and stops.
It can't be "if," I say.
Arcane, he says the way you would if someone you were playing against
earned a point.
It will be a hot summer night like now, he says. Lots of bugs, he says.
But not here.
Of course not, I say. This place?
He takes my hand. It is soft and fat between the folds. He has never
taken my hand before. I stretch it in a kind of hand surprise. We are
talking about death and himself, his two best subjects together.
I will see big evergreens. He points to the stumpy green attempt at a fir
on the lawn across the dark street. My window will look out on them. He
squeezes my hand. And I'll die, die.
His voice rises like he means to do somebody else in.
The bugs smack their shells in the light, they smack the light into their
insides.
Well, there's Colorado. There's fir trees there.
That's only eighteen miles away, he says, throwing my hand down. More
like--New York, he says. They must have something coniferous. A window on
Central Park, and a bell to ring when I feel it's time.
The car is coming back. This time its lights are off, its motor's off,
it coasts down the street with no one at the wheel.
We watch it inch up to the stoplight where the couple kissing in back
jump out and push it through the intersection.
One Linda must have gone home, I say.
She could be in back somewhere too, he says. After all, it's her car.
The car moves almost thoughtfully past a fireplug on the next block.
I'm going to New York too, I say.
I will shine your toaster, he says. You wll be able to see if anyone's
creeping up on you.
No one will creep up on me.
You're beautiful, he says. They all will.
The girls there are all beautiful, I say without a trace of No in my
voice.
Arcane, he says. Arcania. Let's walk you home again.
We leave the bugs to die, moving into the summer heat with our palms
beating like wings against it, walking, while others coast. Soon black
closes down behind us as light on my block isn't necessary yet. It's a mock
block, that's what he calls it, a couple of hydrants, sticks with red rags
tied on. How many times will we circle it tonight, exclaiming on the
tackiness of the red?
We both know Shakespeare, right? he says.
I nod.
That's what we must pillory, he says. Not this tattered red.
It's a who, not a what, I say.
Shakespeare's a what by now.
My father opens our back door, throws out trash underhanded. The bag
explodes once it hits the inside of the incinerator. He throws his cigarette
in after and slams the door shut.
We take a position behind some bushes. The fire when it catches, stinks.
Ash piddles on us in a summer gust.
I'm going in, I say.
The ghosts are coming, the ghosts of all those Shakespeare has pilloried.
He points up at the trashy smoke.
Goodnight, I say, the way I do with him, with a lot of good.
Fred by day but me by night, he says.
Not Friday, I say. I finally got him to ask me.
I knew you would, he says. He does not speak after that.
The car finds us again and this time, the two Lindas are lying on its
hood like it's homecoming. The engine is still off, Bart is pushing.
Kissed her yet? yells one or two of them like they have planned it.
Arcane, I shout back. Quoth Shakespeare.
Is that you? asks my father out the screendoor. You're supposed to be in
here doing the dishes.
A-R-C-A-N-E, I say.
Don't get smart with me, my father says, opening the screendoor wider.
And who's that out there with you?
No one, I say and it's true. His head is dead, as he likes to say. He's
lying flat behind the bushes where no one would look unless they're my age,
and with my exact sadness for the Fred coming up, the silent Fred, all the
silent ones that will take up Fridays, so many you can't walk home.
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