Will spent the morning dodging his wife’s questions about the ambush at the bar, but finally opened up on the way to church.

“Didja at least have fun?” she asked.

“He’s young enough to be my kid.”

“His wife teaches dance.”

“Miss Alice is better.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Give ya the odds...”

“They might be at church today, so be nice.”

“You invited them?”

“Of course I did, darling.”

Will’s grunt put the conversation on hold for the remainder of the ride.

The Carmel family had been members of the non-denominational Church of the Dunes for twenty-three years of its twenty-five-year history. Once a month, Sarah donned a burgundy gown and sang with the choir. Whenever Pastor VanDuyn could guilt him into it, William played the organ.

He dropped Sarah at the front door for choir practice and Janie at the back door for Sunday-school, then he pulled his truck to his usual spot, cranked back his seat, and tried to relax.

Sarah wanted him to be social? 

He could be social. 

She wanted him to be nice? 

He could do that too.

Will’s idea of “nice” was smoking a cigar with “the guys.” He wasn’t one for cracking a beer and talking shop, but he did have a box of Diamond Crowns saved for special occasions. There were only a few places in the States to find the Dominican smokes, so when he stumbled on a whole box in a Traverse City tobacco shop, he didn’t hesitate at the thirteen-dollars-per-stick price tag. Cigars were technically a substance, but they were the only vice that survived his transformation. Sarah didn’t mind as long as he kept them in the stables and tossed any defiled clothes directly in the wash.

He counted this morning: ten smokes. Nobody would be left out.

*  *  *

Easter afternoon was torn from a coloring book with scribbled trees, baby-blue skies and a big orange sun with wavy yellow lines bursting from its core. Girls with pale skin, pastel dresses and dandelions woven in their hair skipped along the front of Will’s hill. Boys played at the end of Brandywine where the blacktop faded to gravel and weeds. A chalk maze wound through the unfinished cul-de-sac complete with jump rope booby-traps and hula-hoop land-mines (though middle-schoolers on bikes posed a more realistic threat). Parents, like helicopters, watched from the curb.

On top of the hill, three white buckets were filled with Mrs. Danthers’ special bubble mix: seven parts water; two parts dish soap; one part glycerin. Pipe cleaners were fashioned into all shapes and sizes and tiny hands popped what little lips blew. The older kids mastered monster bubbles with circles of rope tied to sticks.

The hunt was a success. The woods and hill served as fair hunting ground while the fenced-in corral was sectioned off for toddlers. Every time a golden egg was discovered, Janie and Will shared a knowing glance. At the end of the day, the special eggs could be exchanged for a giant Easter basket with chocolate bunnies, jars of strawberry preserves, and Applebees gift cards.

When most of the eggs had been discovered (Will was bound to run over a few stragglers with the lawnmower later that summer) the Easter Bunny came hopping out of the woods with a bag of fun-sized candy bars. Although the rabbit was an established attraction and a hit with the kids, he was nearly banned last year after Morgan Demfield’s daughter screamed and kicked her way out of his arms. The helicopters converged and deemed the costumed stranger an inappropriate addition to the Carmel Easter Picnic. Will defended Sean Umbers--the man behind the mask--explaining that he was a retired middle-school teacher of twenty years and a sponsor of six children through WorldVision. But the concerned mothers still demanded a meet-and-greet with the rabbit--sans furry costume--before this year’s event. Two empty boxes of wine later, the women were fully satisfied with the divorced Mr. Umbers signing autographs for their five-year-olds. By the end of the hunt, Sean would discover four candy wrappers with scrawled numbers pushed seductively in the crack between the bunny’s suit and head.

The broken heart necklaces that Jenny Johnson and Sloan Elfman refused to remove identified them as BFFs. Their lemonade stand sat at the foot of the hill between the corral and the back door of the Carmel home. For two bucks, customers received a cup of shaved ice with freshly squeezed lemon juice poured on top. Will supported the young entrepreneurs, added a fifty-cent tip, and carried the slush up the hill.

He was breathing hard by the time he reached Sarah--gracing a picnic blanket among friends like the Venus de Milo with arms--but she didn’t notice him. He lowered the moist cup to her back and pressed the plastic against her freckled skin. She screamed and slapped his ankles, then accepted the drink, tilted her head back, and accepted Will’s kiss. (Kissing Sarah was more than a gesture of love, whenever he pressed his lips against hers, he made himself remember how blessed he was. Eyes closed, he smelled the sweet summer aroma of watermelon body spray and recalled making love on the hill after a picnic she assembled as a birthday gift. She wore a black tank-top that day. They laughed at the grass stains on her shoulders.) He drew away from the kiss and Sarah mouthed “I love you,” but her circle of friends remained oblivious to their chemistry.

As Will turned from his wife, he saw them approach. He immediately identified Kayla as a dancer by her defined calves, trim waist, and superbly toned ass. Red, natural curls stretched against her scalp and bounced freely behind her ears. 

Hyde was an inch shorter than his wife. He gripped a cup of lemonade and a leash in one hand and his wife’s hand in the other. The little Bichon lurched forward, jerking its leash and sloshing lemonade across Hyde’s shoes.

Will tapped Sarah on the shoulder to alert her of the approaching couple.

“Welcome, welcome!” she said, leaping from the blanket and grabbing Kayla with both arms.

Will shook Hyde’s hand and felt a sudden tinge of guilt for his “passion” rant the night before. “How was the trek up the hill?” he asked.

“Didn’t break a sweat.” Hyde looked to his wife. “Baby, this is Will Carmel.”

Kayla flashed a wry smile as if she knew an inside joke that she couldn’t say. “Good to finally meet you, Mr. Carmel! Hydey had such wonderful things to say about you!”

Will took her hand and nodded. “Good too meet you too, Mrs. Whitaker.”

The next series of interactions took place in under a second, but Will deftly followed the minutia of the couple’s expressions. The moment the name “Whitaker” escaped his lips, Hyde squinted, freed his hand from Kayla’s, and raised it to visor his eyes from the four o’clock sun. He looked away, and then--as if he realized he made a mistake by breaking contact with Will--flicked his eyes to Kayla and back. The woman never took her focus off William, but readjusted her stance in a misguided attempt at confidence.

“It’s Kayla Reid,” she corrected. “I kept my last name when we married.”

“Ah,” Will said. “Not ‘Whitaker-Reid,’ or ‘Reid-Whitaker?’”

“Just Reid,” Hyde said.

Kayla didn’t allow time for awkward silence; she pulled her hand from behind her back and revealed a pink gift bag with light-green tissue exploding from the top.

“For us?” Sarah asked.

“Because it’s Easter,” Kayla said. “And for inviting us to your fabulous church and glorious picnic!”

“It’s heavy!” Sarah dipped her hand into the bag and pulled out a rock. She turned it over and showed Will the engraved inscription. “’A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words.’ Aww!”

Will interjected, “I prefer, ‘Build a man a fire and keep him warm for an hour. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.’”

Sarah elbowed him in the side. “He’s joking.”

“I was. The stone is lovely.”

“It’s Kay’s birthday on May first,” Hyde said. “Her parents bought her a rock engraver as an early present."

"How neat," Sarah said.

“I love arts and crafts,” Kayla interjected. “I think they go hand-in-hand with dance. And it makes me so incredibly happy to give personalized gifts! They always mean more than flowers or something from a wish-list, don’t you think?” She crinkled her nose.

“You don’t have to put it in your yard or anything.” said Hyde.

“Of course we will!” Sarah playfully slapped him in the gut.

"Also, we’re having a little get-together-slash-party next week if you’d like to stop by.”

Sarah turned to Kayla. “Thank you for the present. It was a great use of your new rock engraver. And we would love to come to your party.”

*  *  *

Months from now, Will would look back at this group of men and call it a “divine joke.” There was Marvin Gibson, the architect from NYU who--until today--Will only saw in passing; Brian “Sherlock” Cavenaugh, a county trooper and the only man here with whom Will had ever carried on a conversation; and Hyde, trailing in back and slurping the bottom of his melted lemonade. There were others--Matt Johnson, William "The Other Will" Rogers, Darrel Pelton, et cetera--but these men would fade from Will’s memory in the coming years.

The group stood outside the studio portion of the stables. Will removed a super-cluster of keys from his pocket, found the smallest of the bunch, slid it into the lock on the front door, then motioned for the men to filter in.

“...then the man stands up, removes his shirt, and says, ‘Here! Iron this!’” Darrel accentuated the punchline of his joke with a giant grin. The guys laughed.

Will missed the first part of the joke but chuckled anyway. “This,” he said as daylight flooded his workspace, “is where miracles happen.”

Brian whistled. “I need my own shed. Dang HOA won’t allow it.”

“This is the front half where I do most of my work. The stables are behind that wall--an old bomb shelter too--but we mainly use it for storage.”

“No floor?” Hyde asked.

“I like the dirt,” Will replied. “This old box has been standin’ for a half-century.” He raked a set of ratchets from the workbench into his palm and dropped them in a drawer. “Forgive the mess. There’s an order to the chaos.”

In the center of the dirt--six feet away from all walls--stood a cherry-brown grand piano. “This is my baby,” Will said.

“Is it an antique?”

“Belonged to my parents. Mom taught me to play on these keys when I was a boy.”

Hyde ran his hand along the lid, then brushed the dust on his pants. “You play it out here?”

“Reconstructing. But she plays nice; low inharmonicity, exceptional overtones...”

Crickets.

“Looks like my garage,” The Other Will said, “but with hanging piano strings instead of tail pipes.”

“If you need it tuned, I got a guy,” said Marvin-the-architect.

Will smiled. “I enjoy the process.”

After two years of tinkering with the piano, it came to represent all the songs that Will wasn’t allowed to play at Big Blue’s; the songs he could write if only he had the perfect instrument. The keys were more than imitation ivory. Each finger pedal was like a blank canvass; the combination of black-and-white keys represented infinite possibilities. He still remembered the evening Sarah pulled the blanket off the mysterious lump on the stable floor. At the time, he didn’t care to see some relic from his past, but after the dust snapped from the blanket, twirled for a moment in the air, then cleared to reveal the legless piano, something inside him clicked. Broken strings cascaded from the sides and the lid was cracked and dangling from the base like a loose tooth. But it didn’t matter. 

Next month, it would stand majestically in their living room. Janie would learn to play. Sarah would take lessons again. William would write a requiem while his wife cooked dinner. The old piano would bring his family together better than any plasma TV.

Hyde knocked a hammer from its hanger among the wall of tools and it clattered on the workbench. “Dangit!” he said. “Sorry, bud.”

Will remembered his plan to socialize. He opened a corner cabinet and removed a cedar box with a gold latch. He flipped it open and a creamy leather smell flooded the studio. “Can I offer anyone a cigar?”

“No thanks.”

“I’m good.”

“Sue would kill me.”

Marvin and “The Other Will” put up their hands and shook their heads.

Will forced a smile. “Anyone?”

More crickets.

He shut the box. “Well, I can’t smoke by myself.” He turned and began to slide the box back into its cubby.

“Hold up!” It was Hyde. “I’ll smoke with ya.”

Will pulled out the box and gave the kid a skeptical smile.

“I smoked a hookah once,” he said.

“Ah.”

“Well... sort of. It was tobacco-less... uh...”

“Shisha.”

“Right.”

“You know not to inhale?”

Hyde shrugged and removed a cigar from the box.

The other men became distracted by the intricacies of Will’s studio. They mulled around the workspace and discussed the heavy rain West Michigan received last week.

Will bit the end of his cigar.

Hyde mimicked.

He removed a stainless-steel zippo from the box and lit them.

Hyde took a few quick puffs to start the tip, then surprised Will by taking the smoke fully in his mouth without coughing. “Thanks,” he said.

Will nodded. “Not a problem.”

*  *  *

“On the first day, God created the dog and said, ‘Dog, I want you to sit by the door bark at anyone who walks by. Do this, and I will give you a lifespan of twenty years.’”

Hyde jerked back in the wicker rocking chair to dodge a bee. 

Will sipped iced tea and continued his joke. “So the dog says to God, ‘That’s a long time to be barking! Let’s say I’ll bark for only ten years, and you can keep the other ten.’ So God agreed.”

The gasoline smell of citronella candles kept the mosquitos away, but not the bees. Hyde wondered if there was a nest under the porch; either that, or they were buried in the creases of the slate roof. He tried to keep his cool, but a particularly fat bee landed on his bare knee. He froze and never broke eye contact with Will.

“On the second day, God took some soot from the Earth and created the monkey. He said, ‘Monkey, you will entertain people. You’ll do tricks and make them laugh. For this, I’ll give you a twenty-five year lifespan.’ But the monkey said: ‘Tricks for twenty years? That’s far too long to perform! How about I give back ten years like the dog did?’ And God agreed.”

Hyde nodded and smirked, not at the joke, but at Will’s deliberate pacing, hand gestures, and silly grin. He held the Coke bottle to the sun to check for drowning bees, then took a swig and filtered it through his teeth, just in case.

“On the third day, God created the cow from the dust. After the cow was formed, God said, ‘You will go into the field with the farmer and labor all day under the sun. You’ll have calves and give milk to support the farmer’s family. For this, I’ll give you a lifespan of sixty years.’ But the cow said: ‘That’s a very hard life to live for sixty years! How about twenty, and I’ll give back the other forty?”

The screen door opened behind Will and Sarah stepped out with her own glass of tea. She leaned against the frame and propped the door with her shoulder.

Will leaned forward in his chair. “On the fourth day, God created humans--the most marvelous of his creation--and he said, ‘Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. You will do this for a lifespan of twenty years.’ But the human said, ‘Only twenty? That doesn’t seem like enough! Can’t you give me that twenty, then add the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back? That makes eighty. That seems fair.”

Hyde and Sarah made eye contact and grinned. Will didn’t notice.

“’Okay,’ God said, ‘you asked for it.’ So he gave humanity all eighty years. Now, that’s why we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves for our first twenty years of our lives. For the next forty we slave in the sun to support our family. For the next ten years we act like monkeys to entertain our grandchildren. And for the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”

It wasn’t until the punch-line that Hyde remembered the joke from an email that recently circulated the subdivision mailing list. He laughed anyway. “So true,” he said. “So true!”

“I’m glad you stuck around,” Sarah said and wobbled the screen with her knee. “Maybe you can convince my husband to spray for bees.”

“Bees?” Hyde said. “I didn’t notice.”

“William and Janie don’t mind them. Of course, I’m the only one who’s ever been stung.”

“They’ll be gone in a few minutes,” Will said.

Sarah replied in a singsong voice, “They’ll only get worse in the summer!”

“I’m on top of it.”

“Supper will be ready in fifteen. Hyde, do you want to stay for Easter dinner? The party’s always exhausting so I didn’t plan a big meal, but you and Kayla are welcome to join us.”

“Kay and I have an unbroken tradition of cooking a new dish on Sunday nights. Tonight is cucumber gazpacho with shrimp. But thanks for the offer!”

“Well, that certainly beats grilled cheese and spaghetti.”

“Homemade,” Will added.

(Later, when Hyde recalled his relationship with the Carmel family, these simple moments of conversation would slip easily into his mind. Bad jokes and dinner invitations were not uncommon in his social life, but something inherent in the soft spring nights on the neighbor’s porch set these friends apart from the others. Even when future events would needle them apart, Hyde would still return to feelings of familiar comfort at the smell of citronella.)

Sarah prodded Hyde about kids, to which he replied, “We’re not quite ready. That’s why we got a dog!” then left a minute later to tend to the grilled cheese. The rest of the evening was left to the boys.

“Beautiful family,” Hyde said.

“Nothing more important. Kayla seems nice.”

“Yeah,” Hyde said, praying Will didn’t ask about his wife’s refusal to take his last name.

“You’re lucky to find your soul-mate at such an early age. I was twenty-eight when I met Sarah.”

“It’s nice. I never had to worry about the whole dating scene. She cooks for me and supports me in my business. She makes me feel comfortable. I guess I found the right person right off the bat.”

“That’s rare these days. Before Sarah, time seemed endless. I would ebb and flow... intaking so much garbage that my body couldn’t handle it anymore...”

“What do you mean?”

“I would give up. I would quit and get clean. Later I would realize that I wasn’t quitting at all; I was merely stopping for a while, letting my body cool down so it could handle the next cycle of shit. I was never done... never really done until I met Sarah.”

“Are you talking about Bill?”

William took the lemon from his empty glass, bit the corner, and tore the meat from the rind.

“Your silence on the subject only makes it more fascinating. What was it? Eh? Sex, drugs... rock and roll?”

“I don’t hide anything.” Will chewed on the lemon and dropped the skin into his glass.

“What’s the worst thing Bill did?” Hyde asked. He wasn’t sure if it was real or imagined, but as Will considered his question, a sparkle like a tiny shard of glass reflected in the man’s eye as he watched the setting sun. Hyde finally understood his friend’s placid demeanor and air of fatherly superiority; it was an aura that could only be attained after years upon years of “been there, done that.”

“The worst thing?” Will considered his reply for a minute longer. “I destroyed my ambitions. I destroyed them, rebuilt them, then left them behind. That’s the worst thing Bill did.”

“At least you had an exciting life. The worst thing I’ve ever done was let my grass grow past five inches.” He nodded to his house a hundred yards away. “Can you believe that? Two weeks in a subdivision and I already get a notice for disobeying a covenant. I don’t even have a lawnmower yet.”

“Use mine for now. Let me know when you need it and I’ll give you the padlock key to the back of the stables.”

“I wrote the HOA an apology letter. Told them I’d get on it ASAP.”

“Not big on yard work?”

“Not exactly.”

“You seem like the type who would make an extra effort. How long does it take to get your hair like that every morning?”

“I just don’t like yard work,” Hyde replied.

“Twenty minutes?”

“To cut the grass?”

“To fix your hair.”

“Three.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, ten. But it takes a lot longer to mow grass.” Hyde smirked and stretched his feet to the porch railing. He readjusted his position in the wicker-- “Ouch, shit!” He jumped up and batted his khaki shorts.

“Everything okay?” Will asked.

“Frickin' bee stung my thigh!”