Bob locked the house up carefully as they left, and they walked to their separate cars. Once again she followed him, even though since she’d grown up in Bradford she knew just as well as he did how to find the Chicago Inn. Maybe even better; he couldn’t recall for sure, but somehow there was the ghost of a memory that she had worked there for a while in high school, bussing tables or busting suds or something. It was a common job for high school kids in Bradford; it had been the same in his parents’ generation and there were probably Bradford High School students working there today.

The Chicago Inn had been built about the time the freeway was going through in the early sixties. It was an unassuming cinder block building that had seen better days. Most people pulling off of I-67 would almost automatically head for the big truck stop on the far side of the Interstate, across from the General Plant, but the locals knew better. They knew the food at the Chicago was noticeably better than at the truck stop, the prices lower, and the parking better since the place wasn’t full of semis. For some reason the waitresses at the truck stop tended to be from out of town and were hard to know, while at the Chicago, even after an absence of several years they were likely to know you and ask about the wife and kids.

Or, at least that was the way it had once been, especially back in the day when a couple of Class of ’88 members had been waitresses there. Either they were no longer working there, or not on shift today, as the only waitresses on the staff this morning were much too young to be ’88s, and there was no recognition on either side. The place didn’t seem to be particularly busy for a Sunday morning; the “Please Be Seated” sign was up, so Bob and Sharon headed toward the back of the restaurant.

He was surprised to hear someone call, “Bob! Sharon!” He looked up, and there at a table in the back sat Scott and Sonja, along with Emily and Kevin at a table with room for a lot more; Scott was waving them over. He glanced at Sharon, and got a sort of shrug as an approval, so led her over to join their classmates. He held the chair for Sharon, then sat down next to her.

“So how are you guys this morning?” he asked. “I presume you all hung the last dog last night?”

“Yeah, we sat around talking,” Scott replied with a smirk on his face. “But we weren’t having as much fun as some people were having. And, my God, till all hours, too.”

“What do you mean?” Sharon asked innocently.

“You know what I mean,” Scott smirked again. “We saw the way the two of you left. And then when Sonja and I got up to our room, we heard just how much fun you guys were having. I’m surprised that you two are able to get out of bed this morning.”

“Oh, Christ,” Bob shook his head. “Don’t tell me?”

Sonja smiled knowingly. “That our room was next to yours? It was, indeed. I have to thank you for it, too. You guys were, uh, well, very inspirational.”

“Then you must have had a good night’s sleep,” Sharon replied maintaining an innocent expression. “There was a great deal of snoring going on somewhere nearby.”

“Could have been,” Scott laughed. “But either what we heard wasn’t snoring, or if it was I’d call it the most erotic snoring I ever heard. I was beginning to wonder if the two of you would ever go to sleep.” He turned to Emily and Kevin, adding, “And then I woke up early this morning to hit the head, and they were going at it again.”

“And very enthusiastically, too,” Sonja smiled. “Like I said, it was loud, but it was very inspirational. It inspired Scott enough to wake me up, and, uh, well …”

“We get the picture,” Emily laughed. “For being cinder block, the walls in that place must carry the noise pretty well.”

“Only if someone is making a lot of noise to begin with,” Scott teased. “So do you guys feel better today?”

“I think so,” Sharon said sheepishly, realizing that her innocent act wasn’t going to play in front of this crowd. “I think it was Vladimir Lenin who said that quantity has a quality all its own. When you have both high quality and high quantity, it can be a most memorable experience. I’m not likely to forget the evening soon, and what followed was rather interesting, too.”

“Well, good,” Emily laughed. “I was beginning to worry about whether we were going to have any legends coming out of this reunion like we did the last one. That might just have saved our reputations.”

“Such as they were,” Sharon shook her head. “At least I don’t live in Bradford anymore and it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll be back for a while.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Emily laughed. “I won’t say anything about it. In print, anyway. But seriously, it does seem quiet after last time, except for that.”

“It sure does,” Scott nodded, taking some of the heat off of Bob and Sharon. “Jeez, last time we were sitting out here the next morning like this, after spending the night hearing the full story of how Denis Riley became Eve McClellan. On top of that, finding out about Jennlynn. You’re right, this was a pretty quiet reunion by comparison.”

“It was, in that sense,” Emily nodded. “Vicky and I have been saying for years that we were more than a bit scared whether to put on another reunion since we had no idea what new bombs were going to get dropped. As it turned out, there weren’t any real ones. Other than Debbie Leffler and her missionary husband, John Engler showing up with Sally Hanson and her daughter was about as far out as it got. I don’t know if that says anything good about the next one or what. I don’t know, maybe we want to do it in five years, rather than ten.”

“You mean, to pull out all the stops?” Scott asked. He turned to Bob and Sharon, who were recovering from seriously red faces, to explain. “There’s a group of us, about a dozen or a few more, who get together fairly frequently, for one reason or another, so maybe that’s why the big reunion wasn’t such a big deal this time.”

“We often have Halloween parties,” Emily added. “In fact, the first one was up at Scott and Sonja’s the year of our tenth reunion, and that was a memorable party of its own.”

“That was quite a party,” Scott grinned. “Everybody came in drag, the guys as girls, the girls as guys. Then, just to be cute, Emily decided to have a contest and see who did the best job. Guess who she got to be the judge?”

“No idea,” Bob shook his head.

“Let’s just say it was the person of the class best fitted to judge how well people can cross-dress,” Emily grinned out with the hint.

“You mean Eve?” Sharon said, surprised. “Boy, that’s hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“It was a huge surprise to me,” Scott agreed. “But everyone seemed so comfortable with it, I was surprised. You don’t expect that from a town like Bradford.”

“Ten years ago it was different,” Emily said. “Then it was a surprise to everyone, but we’ve all now had time to get used to it and realize just how much of a sweetie Eve really is. She hadn’t been in contact with anyone from the class except Shae in all that time, and Shae had known from the beginning. She was really very paranoid about outing herself, and most of us figured that after that reunion we’d never see any of them again. Then the Halloween party came up and I got the idea of inviting her, just to let her know that we didn’t hold any hard feelings. I was surprised that she agreed to come, but since then she’s been a good friend to many of us. I think you know how she helped Dave recover from the death of his wife on September 11, but that’s not the only time that she’s helped a classmate over a rough spot.” She let out a sigh, and continued, “A lot of the kids in the class treated Denis like shit while we were in school, but Eve doesn’t hold that against them. I think that says a lot, especially in how much she’s changed, along with a lot of the rest of us.”

“We’ve all changed,” Scott observed. “Granted, some of us more than others. Twenty years will do that to you.”

“Yeah,” Bob said slowly. “I saw a lot of changes last night, and not just people getting older, either.”

About that time the one waitress on duty got around to taking their orders – apparently Scott, Sonja, Emily and Kevin had only arrived a few minutes before Bob and Sharon. After the long night, Bob was ready for a big breakfast, since after all it was nearly lunchtime and he’d had an active night – even more active than he’d realized, if Scott and Sonja’s teasing had even the germ of truth to it. But even now he felt the aches in his body and realized that it had been a very good night, indeed. The only frustrating thing about meeting up with their classmates was that he’d hoped to have a little one-on-one time with Sharon. He wanted to at least pass along his idea about going to the motel outside Detroit Metro to spend a night while working on their decision about her coming to Colorado. They obviously couldn’t talk about that in any detail with the other four around, but the idea of spending a night in Detroit could be communicated in the parking lot after they were done eating, and a decision didn’t have to be made till they got there.

They spent the next half hour drinking coffee, eating, and gossiping about their classmates. There were a number of people Bob had wondered about who hadn’t been present the night before. Emily was considered the one member of the class who did her best to keep up with everyone, although several people had just plain disappeared, like Bob’s old friend Tracy. Emily knew about some of the others, to various degrees, and was able to fill him in on some of them.

There were, of course, some hinted questions about Sharon and him, whether their obvious dalliance had been a one-night fling, or what, but since neither of them could answer that one they just let the hints roll past. If something did happen, Emily would probably hear about it, from his parents if nowhere else, but after the early part of last night, and then again this morning, Bob had made up his mind to keep at least a little bit better contact with Emily. He got back to Bradford once in a while, after all, and there was no reason he couldn’t drop by the paper and say hello.

It wasn’t until they were done eating and were lollygagging over cups of coffee afterwards that Bob realized that Sharon had been uncharacteristically quiet throughout the meal. She’d held up her end of the conversation, but she hadn’t tried to dominate it or just take off talking in odd directions as was her forte. Once he’d reached that realization, he wondered if that meant something. Could she be embarrassed about being overheard by Scott and Sonja last night? It seemed likely, but maybe she was just being polite, which, in his experience, usually wasn’t enough to quiet her down. Maybe, he realized, she was still thinking about his offer from earlier; perhaps she’d reached a decision about it.

After a while, Scott and Sonja agreed they had to be getting over to his folks’ house to pick up the kids, where they’d been left the night before; Emily and Kevin decided that they might as well get on with it, too. Once that decision had been made, Bob said he’d really like to have another cup of coffee, and Sharon obviously picked up the hint that he’d been waiting for the other couples to leave. When they were gone and the waitress had refreshed their coffee, he smiled and said, “Well, that was something I didn’t expect, but it’s nice to know that I have friends here.”

“It was rather embarrassing,” she shook her head. “Especially to have Scott and Sonja teasing us about our tender tryst last night.”

“I told you that you were screaming,” he giggled.

“I’ll admit to emitting a peep or two in the throes of ecstasy,” she replied in a very deadpan voice, “but I still think calling it ‘screaming’ is a bit much.”

“Considering the fact that my ears are still ringing, I don’t think so,” he smiled. “Not that I’m complaining in the slightest. But yeah, that was a bit much, even though they apparently enjoyed it almost as much as we did.”

“Perhaps,” she replied dryly. “And if they are to believed, more silently. I didn’t hear anything, anyway.”

“Me either. On the other hand, I wasn’t listening. I had other things to do, and so did you.”

“Well,” she grinned. “That’s true. What’s more, I’m looking forward to doing them again.”

“Me, too,” he replied. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. On the way over here I had an idea I wanted to run by you. I have a motel reservation tonight at a nice place just outside Metro. I’ve stayed there before, it’s easily a better place than last night and has a very nice restaurant. What’s better, the rooms are pretty soundproof, since if the wind is wrong you have a jet overhead every three minutes. Anyway, what I was thinking was that we drive up there, get the room, and just spend the night there, that’ll give us a chance to talk and do whatever else we want to do at leisure. Then, if we decide that I’m heading back to Colorado, I could head back on my original reservation, whether you decide to follow or not. That buys us a few hours to make a decision, whatever we decide, even if it’s to not decide anything just yet.”

“That’s an excellent idea, Bob,” she said, sipping at her coffee again. “This whole thing has some potential and I’m certainly considering at least coming out to Colorado. I’ve had a few other thoughts that are probably not fully formed yet. This whole thing has happened so quickly my head is swimming, Bob. There are many advantages that I can see to coming out to Colorado with you, but I have some concerns that we haven’t had the time to talk over yet, and this is not the place to talk about them. On top of that, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night, and I certainly want a nap sometime soon, especially if we’re planning on spending another night enjoying ourselves like we did last night. That seems to solve a number of problems quite easily.”

“I have to admit, I could stand a nap myself,” he said. “And I mean sooner, rather than later. If it works out that I’m flying back to Colorado in the morning, I don’t want to get to sleep at three just to have to get up at five to get on the plane.”

“Good enough,” he said. “Let’s either polish off our coffee or leave it and hit the road.”

“It sounds good to me,” she said. “I’ve really had enough coffee for a while, though I think it will be useful for keeping me awake for the next couple hours. Where is this motel, anyway, and how far is it?”

“It’s a fat couple of hours, I can’t tell you exactly,” he said. “I figure we go up I-67 to I-94. It’s shorter to take US-12 but it goes through a bunch of small towns, so it’s slower. You get off 94 at the exit for the airport. We’ll head up to the car rental place and drop off my car, then go to the motel. That’ll save me a day’s rental.”

“I suppose I’d better follow you again,” she replied. “Are you about ready to go?”

“I am when you are.”

“Then let’s be on our way. I need to make a stop at the little girls’ room before we hit the road, or else the coffee I’ve been drinking is going to make a stop necessary before we get there.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said. “Tell you what, I’ll hit the head, pay our bill, and meet you out in the parking lot.”

She was already waiting in the parking lot when he got out to the Kia. “I’d really rather ride together,” he said. “But whatever happens I have to return the rental car, and this is probably the best way to do it.”

“Yes, I’d prefer that we were together too,” she smiled. “But at least this will give us some time to get our thoughts in order before we get occupied with other things.”

“There is that,” he said. “Will you need to stop for gas or anything?”

“No, I should be all right at least as far as the airport,” she replied.

“Good, I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

Bob got in the Kia, got settled and strapped in, and headed out to the street. The restaurant was right next to the on-ramp for the northbound freeway, this side of the overpass. Just across the street was the knife shop that Vicky and her husband Jason owned; he’d thought about stopping there but it wasn’t open, so that was that. Maybe next time. He waited for a hole in the traffic, and then with Sharon following in her Escort, made a right, then another right, and accelerated up the on-ramp.

It was twenty years, give or take a few days, since he’d taken the same on-ramp out of town to join the army, and for practical purposes it had been his permanent on-ramp out of town. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the huge General complex. Just luck and the army had kept him from that fate; from everything he’d heard from his parents it wasn’t a bad job, but he was just as glad he was doing something else, somewhere else. Then it faded behind him and was gone – a good place for it, as far as he was concerned; the best possible view of the place was in the rear view mirror. He ran the car up to 75, a good speed for the Interstate in Michigan if a little over the limit, checked to see that Sharon was keeping up with him, and set the cruise control, which was something not always found in an economy rental car. Now, he knew, was the best chance to think about all this that he was going to get.

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