The Answer; Part 2.

28th March; 6:45pm


"Take Warren home," my wife said. "Keeping him here would bore him to death with our stacks of papers. Besides, Demi must be waiting," as she tied her hair into a high ponytail with 2 quick swifts of twirling her hair.


My wife, Georgia, who seemed as sexy and inviting to me at the moment as she ever had, who was the very reason I'd been thinking of green sweaters being slipped off and jeans unzipped, and corks popping out of bottles of wine all evening, my wife was sending me in this provocative, luscious, alluring woman in my life. My first love. And unrequited one at that.


Talk about sending a firecracker into the inferno. "Ok," I said and looked for my jacket. Then I muttered, "Don't say I didn't warn you." "What did you say?," asked Georgia. "Nothing," I replied as I went upstairs to wake little Warren up from his deep slumber.


-

29th March; 12: 11pm

"What was he like?" I repeated, killing a few more seconds of time. "Well, let's see. He was very popular in & out of school. A good basketball player. And he had one of those personalities that made people want be around him a lot. Like Fonzie." Warren listened somberly, nodding at each of my declarations. He liked what he heard. Especially the Fonzie remark. And it wasn't as if I was lying to him.


Andrew Ford, with his Bryan Adams good looks, was as popular as they came. That's how he managed to snag Demi Luke in the first place. He probably would have been popular even he wasn't selling weed on the streets of Trotte Avenue. And a couple of times I really had seen him shooting a few hoops with the boys at the high school basketball court. He has a good, sure aim and could dribble as though narcotics agent were hot on his heels.


"And he was very good-looking," I said, "just like you are." Come on McDonald's, come on McDonald's, come on McDonald's, I thought as Trotte Avenue's only traffic light blinked green and I was free to turn right and head for the milkshake. But Warren was not to be pacified with ice-cream and milk, not after asking those questions about his father. Late-father.


"Mom says he was a dreamer," Warren continued, more to himself than to me. " She's says he took off to Alaska like a leprechaun looking for a pot of gold. Mom says don't blame him, you can't expect more than that from a dreamer." I smiled. It would be so like Demi to give Warren the truth in by wrapping it in some nice, poetic gauze.