A Ghost of a Chance

Peter walked closer and he said, "I appreciate what you're trying to do and I thank you, but it just won't work. You can't change the past."

As he said that, the heavens let loose. The rain didn't come down in drops, it came down in bucketfuls. I was immediately soaked through and in a towering rage.

"I can make it change, goddamnit!" I shouted at him. "It's not fair, it'll never be fair."

"I can accept it." Peter said.

"Well I can't and I won't!" By now, I was shouting at him at the top of my lungs.

"It can't be this way, there has to be some hope." I shouted. I began to beat my fists against the granite headstone and I shouted, "Goddamnit, Henry! I know you can hear me. Somebody can hear me! Peter doesn't deserve this and neither does Henry. You have to let them be together."

All of the emotion of the past years had finally broken through my shell and I was sobbing while I shouted. I was a sodden mess, mud covered and cold, and I fell face forward onto the stone.

"Please, please let them be together." I sobbed.

"You're going to catch pneumonia." Peter said.

I continued to sob my guts out against the cold stone. I could see Peter's legs and when I looked up his body, he was staring into the clouds.

"What?" I asked. "What do you see?"

"Don't you see it?" he asked. "It's beautiful."

I looked up into the sky, aware only of a glow behind the clouds.

"It's the moon." I said.

"No, it's coming closer, look."

I stared up into the sky and it did seem that the glow was becoming brighter. The torrents of rain were crashing down around me but I became unaware of the deluge as I watched the sky. The glow was definitely growing, moving toward us from the horizon.

When it was almost overhead, it burst through the clouds with a radiance I've never seen before or since.

"Is it a meteor?" I asked.

Peter was staring upward, his mouth hanging open. I couldn't look directly at it but I could see by the movement of his head that it was descending. In a moment, it was on the ground in front of us. I covered my eyes with my hands and peeked through a tiny gap between my fingers. It looked like an oval with pointed ends, resting upright. Even that tiny glance made my eyes feel fried. It didn't make a sound, all you could hear was the pouring rain.

I looked at Peter and he was smiling and walking toward it. He approached until he was almost in front of it.

"Henry, you handsome son of a gun, what are you doing here?" he asked, staring into the radiance.

I had risen to my feet, still holding my hands in front of my eyes and I held them in front of the glow so that I could see Peter.

He turned to me and said, "He wants me to go with him."

"Go," I screamed, "go with him. Now's your chance."

He smiled at me and stepped forward. I saw him reach his hand out and then he looked at me again.

"I thought it might burn but it feels really good." he said.

Shielding the blinding glow, I could see him stepping forward. The front half of his body disappeared into the opening but then he stuck his head back out.

"Henry has a message for you." he told me. "Casey says he loves you and he's waiting for you."

I felt as if my bones had turned to water, it was a miracle I was still standing.

He moved forward a bit, and then poked his head out again.

"And he said to give Gene a break, he's a really good guy and he likes him."

I was somewhere beyond stupefied, probably in some degree of shock. I watched Peter disappear into the bright void, his left foot the last part of him to be consumed.

The oval began to make a noise, a crackling like electricity or a fire burning out of control. I could hear it over the sound of the rain slamming down.

Then the oval began to shrink in upon itself, never losing shape but disappearing at the edges, almost as if it was drawing inward. In a matter of only a minute, the glow was a big as my palm, suspended in front of me and then it shrank to the size of a pinhole and totally disappeared.

At the very same instant, there was a huge blinding flash in front of me and I felt myself falling over.

When I came to, Ida was crouched over me with an umbrella to keep the rain off of my face.

"I thought you were dead for sure." she said.

"Did you see what happened?" I asked.

"I saw a bolt of lightning strike right dead here." she said "You're lucky your skinny ass isn't fried up like bacon."

I became conscious of the smell of burning rubber and looked at my feet. Tom's boots were melted on the soles and little curls of smoke rose from them. Ida followed my gaze and said, "I told you to wear your boots. Those rubber soles grounded you. Looks like Tom's going to need a new pair."

She helped me to my feet and supported me so that I wouldn't pitch over.

"You can see where the bolt hit." she said, leading me to the gravestones. "It struck right between the two stones. The lightning melted the sand in the soil and threw up a bridge between them out of thunder glass. There's no way they're ever going to be able to get those two apart again."

There was a dark bond between the stones in the light of Ida's flashlight. They were joined inseparably.

We slowly made our way back to my car and Ida helped me into the passenger seat, then got behind the wheel.

"It was a kind thing you tried to do." she said as we drove home. "Don't feel disappointed just because it didn't work."

"I'm not, Ida." I said. "I'm not disappointed."

We drove the road back in silence except for Ida chastising me over my wet clothes and worrying that Tom had awakened to discover her gone. The rain stopped as we drove, the clouds cleared and a full moon lit our route.

When we pulled into my drive, the first thing I noticed was a dark shape on the porch swing and my heart sank. After all of that, after all of the effort, Peter was still here.

I got out of the car and walked forward.

Gene stood up in the moonlight and stepped forward.

"Where have you been this late at night?" he asked. "You said you were going to call me."

I felt my pockets but I couldn't find my phone.

He took a step nearer, down one of the concrete steps and said, "I don't appreciate being toyed with. If you're seeing someone else, you could have just said so. I thought you were feeling the same way I am."

I heard the car door open behind me and Ida strode up to where we stood.

"He's been with me, you big dope. We got stuck in the storm, look at him. He looks like a drowned rat. And as far as I remember, we didn't visit any opium dens or roman orgies before that."

Gene looked from one to the other of us and back again and was opening his mouth to say something when a car's headlights turned into the drive and lit our group up. The driver didn't turn off the engine or the lights but we heard a door open. In a moment, Tom stood beside us.

"What's the idea of keeping my wife out till all hours, you little bastard." he said to me.

"We got stuck." Ida said.

"Stuck, my eye. I knew he was after you when he gave you that clock. I thought you had more sense than to fall in love at your age."

He turned back to me and said, "You're not going to take her. I'll fight you every way there is. I'll let everyone in town that you're a home wrecker."

I was speechless. I looked at Gene and his mouth was also gaping. Then, Tom grabbed me by the shirtfront.

"You stop it right now, you loony old coot." Ida said loudly. "He doesn't even like women."

It was out in the open and couldn't be avoided.

"At least, not that way." I said.

Tom glared at me, and then his face slowly began to relax. Finally, he burst out laughing, grabbed me by the hand and clapped the other hand on my shoulder.

"Well, why didn't you just come right out and say so?" he asked. "I don't have any bad feelings against you fellows. I knew a couple of them when I was in the navy, I never saw how as they were any different from anybody else." He was pumping my hand like we'd just met.

He looked over my shoulder, noticing Gene for the first time and got that merry look again.

"So, are you two like an item?" he asked Gene.

"No." I said at the same time that Gene said, "Yes."

He wrapped his arms around me from behind and said, "He just hasn't realized it yet."

"Well, that's good news." Tom said. He got sort of a sly look and said, "There are a lot of questions I always wanted to ask a fellow like you, stuff about what you do and how and who does what, all of that. I never have been sure I've got it right."

"You could have asked me, you nut." Ida said.

"I can't talk to you about men stuff, besides; I want it right from the horse's mouth so I know it's the truth."

He turned back to me and said, "Ida is going to be binge-watching one of her murder shows the night after tomorrow's. Why don't you come over, I'll get us some rum and coke and we can sit around the kitchen table and let me pick your brain."

"Okay, I can do that." I said.

"You come too, Gene." he said over my shoulder.

When he turned back to Ida, her smile was lighting up the dark.

"What?" he asked.

"You were jealous." she said. "You tracked me all the way over her in the middle of the night, thinking I had a fellow. You just gave me the best present of your life, you old lunatic."

He shuffled his feet, looking down, and said, "I just wanted to make sure you'd be able to get up early enough to cook breakfast. You know I can't even fry an egg without setting the kitchen on fire."

Ida was grinning even wider and her hand snaked out and pinched Tom's buttock. He must have jumped a foot in the air.

"You crazy woman, that's going to leave a bruise." he said.

"That's alright; I know how to make it feel better."

She stepped up to him, wrapped her arms around him and gave him a kiss right out of the movies.

"Maybe you need to go out more often, if this is the mood you come home in." he said when she finally let him up for air.

We watched as they each climbed into their vehicle and then Ida followed her husband home. I went over and sat down on the porch step. Gene came along behind me and sat down at my side and as I leaned against him, he wrapped his arm around me.

"My god, you're freezing." he said.

I sat up and looked at him and said, "So, what happens next, since you've decided to be the one in charge?"

He stood up and pulled me to my feet and said, "Next, we get you upstairs and out of those wet clothes and into a hot shower. Then we get you into a nice warm bed where you're going to sleep until late in the morning."

I allowed him to lead me up to the bathroom where he turned the shower on, then undressed me. I climbed into the warm water and let it flow over me. I wondered what Peter and Henry were doing right now.

When I had finished showering, I wrapped myself in towels and went to the bedroom. Gene was in bed, the bedside lamp on and as I slid in beside him I could feel his nude body against mine.

I reached down and wrapped my hand around the long thick shaft of his hard cock.

"You honestly expect me to go to sleep with this thing in my bed?" I asked.

He pulled my hand up away from his dick, then rearranged our bodies so that we were lying face to face and belly to belly, my head resting on his shoulder and my face buried against the warm pelt on his body.

"You have our whole future to play with that." he said. "Whenever, however and as often as you like. But, right now, you're going to get some rest."

"Yes, sir." I answered. I let myself relax, inhaling his male aroma and feeling his heart beating. It wasn't long until I was sliding into the black abyss of sleep.

"I'm going to take good care of you from now on." I heard him whisper, the very last thing before I was spinning off into the blackness. For the first time in my life, I wasn't afraid.