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The Buick

There's some business of a girl wanting a ride in a Buick. He fishes for the keys in the pocket of his white shorts and arcs them jangling and silver through the air into her hands. The tennis court begins to buckle and heave again and he barely returns the ball. By the end of the set his shirt is damp and he pulls it off over his head, caught for a moment in the folds of his own smell. The long net swells with wind. Eucalyptus leaves skitter across the parking lot. The Buick is back. And dusty, he sees, the radio left on by mistake - 'Apple Blossom Time' pierced with static. On the front seat a purse lies wedged in the crack of the grey flannel upholstery. Its clasp has come open, its lips parted just enough on a little cave, a jumbleof my mother's things. All he remembers is thick auburn hair brushing her blouse oh and the backs of her knees, so vulnerable and familiar that again they'd slipped behind his thoughts unnoticed. He rings the doorbell and quick slicks a hand over his head. Waits under the glare of the porchlight in a little circle of 1939.