Bob glanced at the woman, and recognized Sheila Griffin, another class member. She was a little taller than Sharon and wearing army greens. My God, he realized, Sheila was a master sergeant! That just went to prove that a lot of years had gone by. That long, tall drink of water next to her, also a master sergeant, he assumed was her husband. Their closet must look like a zebra farm, he thought. And yes, they both looked tan to the point of being bronzed. He had a hunch where that might have come from, too – in fact, he’d been there.

“Sheila, it’s good to see you,” Sharon continued without a break. “What, I mean, what is this I hear about your daughter? I hear she’s cutting quite a reputation for herself. I’m afraid I don’t know much about it.”

“To tell the truth, we don’t know much about it, either,” Sheila replied. “We’ve spent so much time in the Gulf the last few years that Telzey has gotten quite independent. She had a ride in the ARCA series this year and I’m not sure how that came down, but she did very well with it. She’s on a Hendrick development contract, and she did so well there’s talk of her being in trucks next year. If that happens and she does well, we’d expect to see her in Cup in a few years. I never, I mean never thought I’d have a daughter doing that.”

“Well, I think it’s just absolutely incredible,” Sharon said. “You have got quite a kid there! You expect your kids to do well but somehow they’ll get into all sorts of things you don’t expect. Kids will do the darnedest things, but it’s hard to believe that we’re all old enough to have kids doing something like that. You must be worried sick about her every time she races. How did you ever decide to let her do something like that? It just seems amazing! I mean, I’ve never had any children, but I think I’d just die if I had to watch them race like that! I’ve watched a couple of the races on TV since I heard about it, and I have to admit from what little I could make out about it she seems to be doing very well …”

As Sharon continued talking like she’d been vaccinated with a phonograph needle, the male master sergeant turned to Bob. “I’m Mitch Amberdon,” he said. “Is she your wife, and you don’t know anyone else here?”

“No, she’s just a friend, and I’m Bob Spheris,” he said by way of introduction. “I’m a class member, too. You’ve been in Iraq, I take it? I was in Kuwait during the first Gulf War. 24th Infantry.”

“Yeah, we’ve been there more the last few years than we’ve been home,” the male Sergeant Amberdon replied. “Mostly Kuwait, though, satellite communications. I’ve been at Baghdad International on TDY tours a few times, though. So has Sheila.”

“It’s got to be tough raising a kid like that,” Bob shook his head.

“It could have been a lot easier, but it’s actually worked out pretty well. Sheila’s parents have had a lot to do with it,” Mitch said. “Back when we were in the Gulf in ’03, Telzey stayed with them in Bradford, and she got to hanging out with the Austin family. Bradford Speedway, you know?”

Bob did some math in his head. “She must have been about thirteen, right?”

“Yeah, I think. Anyway, the next thing we knew she was racing this stock car, a Pony Stock they call it. An ’89 Dodge Daytona. She was like third in points her first season and won it going away the next. After that we were back at Fort Bragg. Telzey was doing well enough with the racing that she didn’t want to give it up, so we brought her car from here to down there and ran it in what they call the Hornet class. I’m nothing of a mechanic, but Telzey found some guy stationed on the post who was one hotshot mechanic. They blew everybody away down there. One night, somebody had been griping about how the car was so fast it had to be a cheater, so Telzey offered to swap cars with the guy to prove it wasn’t. They did, and she still kicked his butt so bad it wasn’t funny. That was the night that Rick Hendrick himself happened to be in the stands. The next thing we knew she was being offered a development contract from Hendrick Motorsports. She’s running ARCA this year.”

“You have one hell of a daughter.”

“I like to think so,” he grinned. “Although I can’t claim a lot of credit for her success. We’d like to be around more, we’ve both just got our twenties in, but they’re offering so much to reenlist that we just can’t pass it up.”

“I got out after one hitch to use the GI bill money for college,” Bob said. “I couldn’t have gone any other way. I’m glad I did it, though.”

Sharon and Sheila were still going at it. Their conversation had the usual ratio of about ten sentences from Sharon to one from Sheila. Mitch shook his head and asked Bob, “Is she like that all the time?”

“I can’t honestly answer,” Bob smiled. “I haven’t seen her for twenty years until just a few minutes ago, but she was always like that before, so it sounds like she still is.”

“I’m afraid that would take some getting used to,” Mitch shook his head.

“I suppose it would,” Bob said. “But you know, back in school, when I was down in the dumps, she could get me out of it quicker than anything else. I don’t know why that was, but it was, so I’ve always kind of liked her. A lot of times I thought about coming back east and looking her up, but I was always afraid that the things that I liked most about her would be the things that would drive me right straight up the wall in the long run.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Mitch replied. “Sheila and I didn’t know each other all that well when we got married, and she got pregnant right after that. It’s been trouble at times and there have been times that we’ve been glad to be stationed apart for a while because it just showed us how much we missed each other.”

“Yeah, I’ve missed that,” Bob agreed, “I’ve never been married, but I often think I should have worked at it a little harder. As far as that goes, Sharon is still sort of my fiancée, I suppose.”

“You and her? I detect a story!”

“Not much of one,” Bob shrugged. “When we were at graduation, I knew I was going to be going in the army and she was going to be in college. Now, we’d been friends for a while, dated a little, and I took her to the prom. Anyway, we were kind of sorry to be leaving Bradford and thinking it might be a long time before we saw each other again. Anyway, we were just teasing each other, and we agreed that if neither of us had gotten married in twenty years we’d have to marry each other.”

“And tonight’s your twentieth reunion?” Mitch shook his head. “Better watch it with the brew, my friend. You might find yourself biting off more than you can chew.”

Bob smiled and shook his head. “Oh, I don’t think so, but the first thing she asked when I saw her if I was ready to marry her now, so I don’t think she’s forgotten it either.”

“Just watch it with the brew,” Mitch warned again. “You could be in real danger.”

“I can think of worse things,” Bob smiled. “Believe it or not, I can.”

“Worse than what?” Sharon broke into the conversation.

“Oh, I was just telling Mitch about the promise we made to each other while we were waiting to graduate,” Bob smiled.

“You mean the one about our getting married! Oh, you dear!” Sharon grinned. “There have been many lonely nights when I only kept from crying myself to sleep because I knew that I had you sitting out there as a backstop. You were a great comfort to me all those years, my darling, even though you weren’t around to take me in your arms and make love to me.” Her grin was really wide, and she was on a roll. What’s more, she knew it, so she started laying it on thicker. “In all those times that I felt lonely and unloved, I knew that there was at least one man who was ready to love me and cherish me and make me his till death us do part. There were times when my spirit would have been crushed and broken were it not for the memory of your caring words. Have no fear, my love, I have waited for you every minute that you have waited for me.”

“Tell me, dear child,” he replied, getting into it himself a little. “On those nights when you lay awake so lonely and distraught, had you not been reading too many trashy romance novels before retiring for the night?”

“Oh, you,” she laughed, reaching up to put her arms around his neck so she could pull him down to kiss him. “God, I’ve missed you. I think you’re the only man I’ve ever met who is not only willing to put up with me but likes doing it.”

“Oh, boy,” Sheila laughed. “Maybe you’d better get a room, you two. Or maybe we just ought to get Emily in here.”

“Emily?” Bob frowned. “What’s she got to do with it?”

“You don’t know?” Sheila laughed. “I thought everyone here knew. Emily is the mayor of Bradford. She married Vicky and Jason, and later Dave and Shae.”

“I’ll bet she’d do it again,” Vicky laughed. Somehow, she’d sneaked up on the group and had been standing just outside the circle listening to Sharon carry on. “But this isn’t Bradford and you’d have a waiting period. I guess they still do quickie weddings down in Angola, but not on a Saturday night, so you’re stuck either way.”

“Emily is the mayor? Of Bradford?” Bob said. “That proves I haven’t been around. When did this happen?”

“Eight years ago, I think it was,” Vicky laughed. “Look, Bob, if you’d come around more you might hear some of these things.”

“OK, I’ll grant you that,” he nodded. “Things will change on you, won’t they? I think of Sheila, for example, and I think of a girl with bad acne running around school in volleyball shorts. Now she’s a master sergeant with a kid running in NASCAR. Something had to have happened in all that time.”

“Yeah, a lot of years have passed while we’ve been looking the other way,” Vicky said. “I’ll admit, I almost missed the bus myself. People have changed, some more than others. I mean, look at Eve. Can you look at her and even think of her as the person she once was?”

“No, I can’t,” Bob said. “In fact, it’s been bugging me. I can’t put a finger on her at all. I don’t remember her in the slightest, although she seems vaguely familiar somehow. I can’t remember any girl named Eve in the class. That’s what twenty years will do to you.”

“More than just twenty years,” Vicky grinned. “And she easily has changed the most of any of us.”

“Yeah, so?” Bob said. “I still can’t place her. Who is she?”

It was obvious from the grins on everyone around that Bob was the only one of the group who wasn’t in on the secret. Even Mitch was aware of it, to look at him. “Bob,” Sharon grinned. “Do you remember Denis Riley?”

“Sure, I remember Denis, that little twerp –” he started, then it hit him. “Oh, my GOD!” he shook his head. “You’re telling me that Eve is Denis Riley?”

“Technically, was Denis Riley is the proper term,” Vicky smiled. “She hasn’t used the name since the day we graduated. She was well along in her transition at the time, but the only one who knew it was Shae. They kept the secret until our tenth reunion, when Eve outed herself. She’s been a good friend of a lot of us since. She really is a sweetie and is sharp as hell. She has a private practice as a psychologist in Chicago, and her husband is a university professor.”

“I must say I found it hard to believe when I first heard about it,” Sharon said. “I’ll admit to having a hard time making the mental jump myself. But when I sat back and thought about it in context, I have to admit that she makes a much better woman than she ever would have made a man. In my travels I have come across a transsexual here and there who has not made anywhere near as successful a transition. There was a girl I worked with in Florida who had gone through the same thing, but still had trouble coming to grips with it. Raylene was a nice girl in her way but she seemed adrift between two worlds. Eve, on the other hand, seems quite comfortable with the lot in life that she chose.”

“I didn’t know you’d been in Florida,” Bob said, reaching for a piece of stability in a sea of confusion.

“Only briefly,” Sharon said. “It was while I was between colleges for a period. I got a job at Disney World, selling popcorn, as it was. It barely made me a living, but at least it was over the winter when it was warm there. It wasn’t a thing like when I spent that winter working at a ski resort in New Hampshire. That was cold. Cold! And snow, you wouldn’t believe it. I can’t imagine how people could go out and ski in some of the weather we had. It was worse than Buffalo, except we didn’t get as much snow.”

Count on Sharon to confuse things when they needed to be confused, Bob thought. Thinking back to high school days, he couldn’t project his memory of Denis forward and make a man out of him. He seemed like such a weird kid, such a wuss. Yeah, maybe he made a better woman than he did a man. Or she did, or whatever. He’d met a couple transsexuals before at Colorado State, and the use of the language could get a little slippery around them. “Well, I guess,” he said. “When you stop and think about it, it makes sense.”

“Yeah, it does,” Vicky replied, figuring what was going through Bob’s mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen the reaction. She was a good friend of Emily, who kept a finger on most of the class. Those they’d had contact with knew the story by now, but Bob had to be one of the exceptions. Somehow Bob had slipped through their fingers over the years until Emily literally ran into him at the grocery store. “It turns out that Denis was born intersexed, with characteristics of both genders. The doctors decided he ought to be raised as a boy, but they’d guessed wrong, which is why he always seemed so weird to everyone.”

“Before this evening is over with, I need to apologize to her for some of the things I said to her in school,” Bob said. “They were mean and cruel at the time, and I should have known better.”

“Most of us should have known better, Bob,” Vicky said softly. “It’s called growing up, and we still had a lot of it to do when we graduated.”

“Yeah, but I still should have known better.”

“And I should have known better when I fucked up and married my first husband,” she replied. “It took me a while to get over that, but that’s another story. But hey, I’ve got to circulate, and you should, too. There are other stories around this place that you should hear.”

“Thanks, Vicky, I guess I’d better” he replied. He felt the heft of his beer can – it was getting empty. “Sharon,” he said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Why, of course, my love,” she grinned. “But if you don’t mind, I think I’ll have a glass of wine instead of a beer. For some reason, this doesn’t seem like a beer evening to me. Whatever house white they have will do, I’m no wine snob. I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed a few cans of beer from time to time, but American lager doesn’t exactly float my boat. I was once in London, and wanted to find out why the British feel their beer is so great. I walked into the first pub I could find and asked for a glass. The waitress asked what I wanted. I said I didn’t know, and asked what she had. She rattled off a list of things in a mush mouthed Cockney accent I couldn’t make out, and the only thing I heard was ‘lager’, so I asked for that. You can’t believe how surprised I was when she brought me a Carling Black Label.”

“That would grind me, too,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t take too long, my love,” she smiled. “We’ve got lots more catching up to do.”

She was probably right about that, Bob thought as he headed over to the bar at the back of the room. It was more crowded than it had been earlier, and there were a few more people he hadn’t seen in a long time and talk to while he waited his turn for the bartender. Most of the conversations, though, were of the ‘Hi, Bob, how ya been?’ nature, and some of them were with people he really didn’t care if he ever saw again, anyway. He’d been friendly with a lot of the kids but had no real close friends – not even Sharon. Well, there was one guy, Tracy, who he’d probably been closer to than most, but Tracy had disappeared immediately after graduation like he always said he’d planned to do.

On reflection, he decided he didn’t want to stand around swilling beer all night, either. Once he got two glasses of white wine he headed back over to the table where Sharon sat waiting. She was in deep conversation with Cindy Dohrman – well, it had been Dohrman, and he couldn’t see her name tag to see what it was now – but the conversation didn’t last long after he arrived back. Cindy had been the short but brusque and power shooting forward that, along with Shae Kirkendahl (Patterson now) who had led the girls basketball team to two state championships in a row, still the most recent championships the school had won in any sport, he understood. Cindy had been another girl who he had liked, but he would never have dared to ask out on a date. He’d been kind of shy back in those days, and maybe he hadn’t overcome it as much as he would have liked.

“So, Bob,” Sharon asked in a businesslike manner as she turned her attention back to him, “a few minutes ago I heard you say you’d been in the army. I didn’t know that. Did you find the experience exciting?”

“Not particularly,” he replied. “You know my family doesn’t have any money to speak of, and there was no way they could send me to college. I decided the GI bill was the best deal I was going to get. I spent four years in the service, about half a year of that in the Persian Gulf. After I was back in the states they sent me to Fort Carson, which is at Colorado Springs. I decided I liked Colorado and decided to go to school there when I got out of the army. It wound up that Colorado State was the best deal, so I went there. I had a student job in purchasing, and when I graduated they asked me to stay on. And there I am. It’s been what? Twelve years now? Something like that.”

“So no world traveling? No exotic places? No adventurous jobs? Nothing like that?”

“Afraid not,” he told her. “I think if you asked anyone in this room to describe me back in school days in one word, that word would have been ‘dull,’ and they would have been right. I’m a simple pleasures kind of guy. From what I’m picking up from you, you’re the one who’s had the adventures.”

“I’ve had a few,” she said. “I wanted to travel when I got out in the world, and I’ve been able to do that. The only job I’ve held longer than a couple of years is the one that I’m out of in Buffalo, and I have to admit that it was getting stale, but at least I can say that it left me, rather than the other way around. I’ve mostly been able to land on my feet, though. There have been a couple times I’ve had to move back in with my parents for a while, but I hope to avoid it this time. They’re in Florida now, they retired a couple years ago and moved down there. Port St. Lucie, in fact, I’ve been there, it’s a nice place, but well, it’s Florida, it’s full of old folks and sand, along with the occasional alligator. Alligators are interesting animals, you know. Have you ever seen one up close? What a magnificent animal, so well suited to its habitat! Have you ever been to Florida?”

“Nope, never been,” he replied. “I hate to say it, but I’m not much of a traveler. I have to go places for work once in a while, and I usually manage one of those trips to be to Phoenix in the dead of winter, to get away from the cold for a while.”

“Do you get a lot of snow there?” she asked. “The pictures I’ve seen of Colorado in the winter makes me think of mountains of snow, snow even worse than Buffalo. I’m not much of a snow person, although I don’t like extreme heat very well, either. I don’t know how my parents can stand to spend the summers in Florida, with all the heat and humidity and mosquitoes and hurricanes. But they say they like it and if that’s what they like, more power to them. My mother has taken up golf, much to my surprise. Do you play golf?”

“No, I don’t play golf,” he said. “My blood pressure is high enough as it is, and I already know how to swear. I occasionally go out for a weekend and do a little fly fishing, but I’m not very good at it. It’s just an excuse to get out and do something while I can enjoy the peace and quiet, and not have to hear a phone ring.”

“Don’t you have a cell phone?” she asked. “You just about can’t go anywhere without hearing someone talking on them sometimes in the rudest way. I mean, I was in a movie the other night! A movie! Someone’s cell phone rang, and she sat there talking on it very loudly in the middle of the theater. I mean, come on folks, that was rude and thoughtless. I’ll bet she puts on her makeup while she’s driving to work, too. People like that scare me. So what do you do for vacations? Do you go someplace exciting?”

“Oh, I go to Las Vegas every now and then,” he replied. “There are usually very cheap air fares there from anywhere, and there are things to do.”

“Gambling?” she said. “Something that involves skill, like blackjack? Or pure luck, like roulette? Or just stupid, like slot machines?”

“Oh, sometimes I’ll drop a few bucks into the slots,” he said. “But there are always some really good shows going on.” He was not about to tell her what he usually did in Las Vegas, it wasn’t any of her business. He was ashamed of it himself, but sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do.

“The slots are mind numbingly boring to me,” she said. “You put in a coin, push a button, put in a coin, push a button, just like you were working on an assembly line. I have never spent more than ten minutes playing slot machines at one time. If I’m in the mood for adventure, I try roulette. That’s so much fun, you never know what’s going to happen. I always like red, I like to bet red. Red is my favorite color, you know. I had a red Dodge Neon one time, it was a fun little car, almost like a sports sedan, but I kept being pulled over by the police for speeding. I had someone tell me once that red cars are more likely to get pulled over, and I believe them. When I finally decided to trade the Neon off, I decided on a green car just for that reason. I don’t drive any more slowly, but I haven’t been stopped since. I don’t think that’s very fair, do you? I mean, come on folks, red, green, what’s the difference? What kind of car do you have? I’ll bet it isn’t something very exciting, considering how you don’t seem to have much adventure in your life.”

“Chevy Malibu,” he replied. “Light gray. You guessed right.”

“And I’ll bet you don’t get stopped for speeding very often, do you? If you had a red car, I’ll bet you’d have speeding tickets right and left, and that’s just the way it is. But then, I’ll bet you don’t drive over the speed limit much either. Now I admire that Amberdon girl, the Sergeants Amberdon’s daughter. She gets to drive fast and she doesn’t get a ticket for it, either. In fact, they give her money to drive as fast as she can. Now that’s not very fair either, that some people can get paid for driving fast while the police want to charge other people for doing it.”

“I’ll bet you six to two that if she were to hop in a race car and drive down I-25 from Fort Collins to Denver at what that thing can do that she’d have every cop in Colorado on her tail,” he laughed. “They’d probably send out the National Guard with their helicopters to chase her down.”

“Yes,” she grinned. “And if they actually caught her they’d probably ask for her autograph.”

“But tell me,” Sharon continued, “what else do you do for fun? You fish, you go to Las Vegas occasionally. I’ll bet you just sit back and read a lot, and don’t even turn the television on unless you have to.”

“That and mess around on the Internet,” he admitted. “There’s some good stuff here and there on the net. I prefer to get my news off AP directly, rather than having to leaf through all the garbage in the papers. It gets right down to the basics, and still they ignore a lot of real news to put out the latest dirt about this Hollywood celebrity or that one. I mean, I couldn’t care less about what Britney Spears did last night at some nightclub.”

“Oh yes! Oh, you are so right, Bob! How can we as a society manage to care anything about some under talented and over reported twit does? All she knows how to do is flash her body at a camera and act out to get her name in print. What does that say about what kind of a people we are that she gets that kind of attention? There are real stories out there, real things for the news media to cover, and all you see is trash and more trash. I mean, I could walk down the street in the nude and do I expect to get my picture all over the media, the National Inquirer or like that? Why, of course not! Of course not!”

“But you’re not famous like she is.”

“And why is she famous? Tell me? Is it because she is talented, or just provides jobs for ink salesmen? If I were to get out of a taxi without any panties on and show my stuff would it get splattered all over the news? No way! No one would care!”

“Hey, I don’t like her any more than you do,” he grinned. It was enjoyable to just sit back and listen to her rant – she could get going on anything. He was beginning to realize just how much he’d missed her over the years. They’d had a few good discussions in high school, many like this. She’d really polished up her act in the time they’d been apart. “How did we get on this subject, anyway?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she grinned. “Does it matter?”

“No, not really,” he smiled. “Don’t let me hold you back, though.”

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