“Ben Bordini died. His funeral’s today.” Nancy exuded a small-town-busybody quality. Something admired three decades ago when we first met. But only because she knew which local guys our age were single, recently split from girlfriends, or otherwise worthy of a backseat roll.

The phone shifted from right to left ear so I could empty grocery sacks while Nancy cracked open the old yearbooks, beginning with account of what school year Ben was in compared to herone year older.

Oh no. My brain was processing the news at a slower speed than Nancy’s blathering eulogy. She didn’t really know the man, but laid personal claim to everyone from the general area in which she grew up.

A bag of canned vegetables landed hard on the kitchen table alongside my heart. We weren’t old enough to start burying former lovers. Hell, scrawny Mick Jagger was still strutting his wrinkled junk. I crossed the room to a west window and fiddled with my Christmas cactus. Darn blooms always burst too early. Fade too quick. “He had cancer,” I said while Nancy took a breath, “I read it in his wife’s divorce file when I was still working at the law office.”

“Gee, I didn’t know,” Nancy said in funeral home tone. “Wesley bought Ben’s exterminator business, you know.” Wesley, a real dick-dandy from the dusty annals of Nancy and Wanda Gone Wild. “And Wesley uses those chemicals without a mask.” Her concern was admirable considering Wesley broke her in at sixteen, gave her an engagement ring at seventeen, and two-timed her at eighteen.

December mid-afternoon gray stretched across my backyard to the hard road, then melded into a drab sky. Memory can be a blast, and a bitch. “We dated some,” I heard myself tell her, though not sure why. Maybe to squelch the Wesley wellspring. Or prove she didn’t know everything about everyone. Sure as death and taxes, she didn’t know this tidbit.

“Really?” Nancy’s voice perked up, eager for every juicy detail.

“Well, sort of.” The thing about old friends, old friends who ran wild together, is that they don’t mince words. One-night-stand used to denote a dirty act, and I’ve paid a boatload of dues since those days. Labels and sanctimony don’t mean jack anymore. “We mostly fucked,” I said, wincing a hair at my raw honesty.

I had done Ben and now he was dead, repeated in my head.

An inappropriate laugh escaped Nancy. Reminded me of people at visitations who forget about the body in the casket once they’ve paid their respects and start idle, echoing chatter. Relieved, I suppose, they’re leaving the premises vertical. “No kidding. I didn’t know that,” she said.

Truth told, was just a brief fling of a fuck. A few rides on his rocket, an introduction of roommateturned out to be the same who knocked-up a classmate of mine in ‘73and private showing of the men’s windowsill pot garden. Seemed almost a wishful dream. Here and gone in a moment, the whole fuss flamed and fizzled in two week’s time. Still, no real regrets on my end.

Ben was handsome and the more mature of the lot I’d met through Nancy’s acquaintance. One last Sunday together we went to a dive bar and got righteously buzzed, then bounced the bedsprings in his parent’s house. He fell asleep after, while I stared at the ceiling. Not only had I liquored up on a Sundaya serious sinbut I was au naturel in Mr. and Mrs. Bordini’s home. Followed was narration of a stack of Ben’s ex-girlfriend photos. The look on his face said it all: he and I weren’t destined. As neither was Nancy and Wesley.

I let the subject drop.

Nancy didn’t press.

The conversation flipped back to her.

My journey, though winding, eventually led to love, fulfillment, stability. Peace. Nancy finished prattling and disconnected, forever wonderful Wesley still hot on her jilted lips. I sat down to reflect, the groceries could wait. So long, Ben, I thought. Again.

Acutely aware of my own mortality just then, I sent a hope into the ether that Ben had found some happiness in his lifetime. And I hoped if he ever thought of me, it was also with no regrets.

About the Author

Wanda Morrow-Clevenger

Wanda Morrow-Clevenger lives in Hettick, Illinois. She smiles when recalling former days of boys, bellbottoms, and Moody Blues albums. Her work appears in the Storyteller; Nuthouse; The Nocturnal Lyric; Up the Staircase; Flash Fiction Offensive; Leaf Garden; TheRightEyedDeer; and Every Day Fiction. Forthcoming in Clockwise Cat and Conceit Magazine.