At his desk early on Monday, scrolling through inbox crap from the weekend, Randy Wasserman made the mistake of opening a strange email in his junk file. In the preview, he could see the salutation invoking his high school nickname, ‘Waz’. Only somebody who knew him back in the day would use it. When Randy read the message and saw the sender’s name, Mike Thomas, he drew a blank. Zero memory of a Mike Thomas from Central High.

Oh, well. Randy patted the bald spot on the crown of his head. Everybody was having trouble with names these days. Later, sipping coffee with his weekly breakfast group, Randy turned the discussion to this phenomenon. He said, “It seems we’re at the age when long-lost acquaintances feel compelled to reach out and reconnect, for whatever reason.”

“Sometimes, it’s a making-amends thing,” said Cliff Carter. He was a veteran estate lawyer, and had just announced his second attempt at retirement. “Happened to me last month. A fraternity brother who borrowed my car and totaled it, suddenly calls and wants to apologize, all these years later.”

Randy said, “Mike Thomas is a big fan of a touring bluegrass band. He’s coming to town to catch a concert and wants to get together for a drink. Frankly, I still have no memory of him.”

“Look him up in your yearbook,” suggested Dr. Marvin Thorne, between bites of his cheese omelet.

Marvin was a burnt-out clinical psychologist. After twenty years on the stress-care unit at the hospital, he was shifting into private practice, subletting office space from Cliff.

“I don’t have a copy anymore,” Randy said, “Anna took it with her when she moved out west.”

“How’s Anna doing? Have you talked to her lately?” Marvin asked.

“Can she still recite the Canadian provinces in alphabetical order?” Cliff said.

Randy winced and shrugged. All his alumni buddies, and even those from other classes, routinely asked after the Central High Prom Queen of 1989. It was a pain in the ass.

“I haven’t spoken with her since Curt’s graduation,” Randy said, “and, as for her favorite party trick, I wouldn’t know. Probably not. She’s apparently experiencing some early onset dementia issues, like her parents did.”

“So, what’s the down side of meeting Mike Thomas?” Cliff asked bluntly, getting things back on track. “What do you have to lose?”

Such questions were normal for this group. It was originally formed to discuss marketing strategies and accounting software. George Gonzalez, a publicist, whose firm had pioneered a controversial campaign to sell advertising on gravestones, said, “Yeah, pal, what do you have to lose?”

Randy took a bite of his croissant and flicked a few crumbs off his vest. “For one thing, bluegrass is not my favorite,” he said. “My dad played the banjo, badly.”

“You don’t have to attend the concert,” George said.

“But what if he wants to have more than a drink? What if Mike Thomas wants to go bar-hopping? I’d have to admit to being one-and-done, that I don’t have the stamina anymore,” Randy said.

“I hear you, man,” George said.

In the ensuing decades, this breakfast crew had evolved into a support group for incontinent insomniacs. “Another potential problem,” Randy said, “what if it’s obvious that I have no memory of him?”

“Fake it till you make it,” Marvin said. “I do it with my patients all the time. You’ll place him eventually.”

“Or worse,” Randy said, “what if this is some kind of scam? What if Mike Thomas is actually a foreign agent for the Chinese on an industrial espionage mission?”

Cliff laughed and said, “Why would the Chinese want to steal information from the owner of a picture-framing shop?”

“Point taken,” Randy said, reaching up to adjust the tight knot of his necktie. “Look, here’s what I’m afraid of – Mike is going to want to reminisce about Anna. He’s going to want to talk about her garage parties, and I’ll have to confess to being separated, to not seeing her in a long time.”

Anna was Randy Wasserman’s high school sweetheart and estranged wife. The question of why they had never divorced was a head-scratcher for all concerned (including several women who Randy had dated). He and Anna had been living on opposite coasts since 2005. Somehow they had raised a child together long distance, and somehow she paid the mortgage on her beachfront condo, despite not holding gainful employment of any discernible kind. Randy suspected her of dealing in illicit substances, mushrooms probably. That would be just like Anna, the wild child who never grew up. She married her high-school boyfriend as a gift to her long-suffering parents, and as soon as they had a grandchild, and as soon as Randy was officially installed as manager of the family business, the Picture Perfect frame shop, Anna skipped town on a midnight bus.

Monday noon, back at the office, Randy decided to phone Anna, spur of the moment, to ask if she remembered Mike Thomas. It was as good an excuse as any to communicate again. Their son, Curt, had graduated from college last year, and was basically on his own now, so they’d had less contact. Also, what with the recent dementia rumors, he thought it best to check in. As Curt described during his last Christmas visit, “Mom has always been pretty spacey. It’s hard to gauge what’s the condition, and what’s just her being her.”

Randy dialed Anna’s number straight off, without having to look it up.

She answered on the second ring and said, “To what do I owe this sunrise summons?”

“Oh, shit did I screw up the time zones again?” Randy said.

“That’s okay. It’s almost nine. I’m awake, doing my Duolingo. Three hundred forty days in a row.”

“Good for you,” Randy said. “What language are you learning?”

“Hungarian,” Anna said.

“Are you planning a trip?”

“No, just for fun,” she said.

Totally impractical, just like her. Randy made a stupid joke. “It’s all goulash to me.”

“Very funny. Whadya want?” Anna said, as if sensing his implicit criticism.

Randy explained the Mike Thomas situation, using his seriously polite co-parent voice.

Anna chuckled and said, “Your nickname was ‘Waz’. Totally forgot. You should put that on your business cards.”

Randy said, “I was hoping you could help me place this blast-from-the-past guy.”

“Yeah, okay,” Anna said. “What was his name again?” 

“Mike Thomas.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” she said, “but, hey, I was zapping quite a few brain cells back then.”

“We both were,” Randy said.

A lot of it happened in the granny-flat above the storage building at the back of the Picture Perfect frame shop. Anna hosted impromptu dance parties after her volleyball games. Social media hadn’t started up yet, thankfully, so there was no existing online documentation of their antics. From his corner office, Randy gazed out at the drawn curtains in the empty granny flat. Were the curtains moving? It looked kind of ghostly.

He mused out loud, “We had some good times up there.”  

“I’m not doing too well in the brain cell department now either,” Anna added.

Hello, what? This was unexpected. Anna rarely opened up with him, primarily because of a belief that her estranged husband viewed her as a ‘lost cause’ and himself as the victim of her lost-cause, bad-girl failings. Having done little to dispel this perception over the years, Randy attempted to take a small step in that direction. He said, “Welcome to the club.”

“So what are you going to do about this Mike Thomas?” Anna asked. “You could just ignore the email, blow him off.”

Randy coughed and said, “I don’t know. I should probably meet him and see what happens.”

“Just don’t wear my dad’s clothes,” Anna said. “Wear something normal, a pair of blue jeans and a sweatshirt. I saw the company Christmas card on the website last year. You look ridiculous in a bow tie.”

Randy rubbed the bald spot at the crown of his head. What did it mean that his estranged wife was clicking on the company website? He said, “I would have figured you’d get a kick out of me wearing his duds.”

“Sure, it’s sweet, but not a good look for you,” she said.

Anna’s father had been a dapper dresser, cutting a figure in silk bow ties and three-piece suits on the showroom floor. His sartorial interest in tweeds had been mentioned in his obituary. Randy and his father-in-law were roughly the same XL size. Or, more accurately, a decade ago they had become a similar size when a heart ‘event’ prompted Randy to lose forty pounds. After Anna’s dad passed, Randy started wearing the suits and ties to work, as an expression of affection and honor, and to maintain continuity with their loyal customers.

Anna said, “Lemme know how it plays out with Mike Thomas.”

“Will do,” Randy said.

This was also different, coming from her. Their phone exchanges were usually short and focused strictly on co-parenting duties, and now here comes an invitation to continue a personal chat. Secretly, Randy had been leaning toward ignoring the Mike Thomas email. He was feeling a bit too vulnerable and did not want to be seen struggling with yet more blank-stare gaps in his Central High memory.

In fact, Randy had already deleted Mike’s email. That was an hour ago. It should still be retrievable from the trash file. Peering out again at the granny flat curtains, Randy decided to suck it up. If seeing Mike Thomas for one drink would grant him license to shoot the breeze with Anna … surely Cliff and Marvin and George would advise him to go for it.

“Waz, so great to see you again,” Mike Thomas said, hoisting his butt up onto the barstool. “What’ll you have? You used to be a bourbon hound.”

“That’s true, but it keeps me awake at night now. I’ll stick with a decaf,” Randy said. “How was your concert?”

“The boys were really on fire tonight,” Mike said. “We’ve been on the road since April, playing a lot of festivals and such, and they just keep getting better.”

“Are you a musician? Are you part of the band?”

Mike Thomas grinned, flashing some gold bridgework, and said, “Yes and no. I follow them around six months of the year, and spend the rest of the time in Florida.”

Randy tried to respond with a smidgen of recognition, but none forthcoming, he said, “Sounds like you’re doing what you love. That’s important.”

Mike Thomas tossed back his double shot of Old Crow and interpreted this comment as Randy remembering that he had been a cheerleader. “It wasn’t so common at the time, a male cheerleader,” Mike said, “maybe that’s why I do the band groupie thing. I like cheering people on.”

How could Randy not remember this fellow? He seemed affable enough, one of the gang.

“I used to work the concession stand at the basketball games,” Randy said. “That was a zoo.”

Mike flashed his gold smile again and said, “Nothing like a footlong hotdog slathered with mustard. I remember your Anna slinging the soda pop. She could fill a Big Gulp right to the brim, with minimal spillage.”

Randy laughed, summoning that image too, clear as day. It felt odd to hear him call her, “your Anna”. He redirected them back to safer territory. “So, what kind of career did you have that allows you this itinerant lifestyle?”

“Real estate, what else? Flipping houses. It’s a good way to make money fast. I could still be doing it, but health-wise things aren’t so great. I inherited some bad genes on both sides, so I figure I’d better have some fun before my foundation crumbles, so to speak. Plus, I don’t have much in the way of family anymore, so there’s nobody really to take care of me when things get bad. Even if I did, I wouldn’t want them to have to be responsible for a dying old fart.” 

Randy nodded and said, “Exactly. Anna and I were forced to be caregivers for both sets of parents. They refused to go into assisted living.”

“What about you?” Mike asked. “You took over the frame shop from Anna’s folks, right? Are you still in business? Has it done okay?”

“It took a while to learn the art. Applying corner clamps for custom size jobs can be tricky, but I’m paying the bills,” Randy nodded, “including my son’s out-of-state tuition.”

“That’s something to be proud of,” Mike said.

Randy had labored assiduously over the years to expand Picture Perfect’s client pool to include corporate and retail, gussying up downtown lobbies and conference rooms. He’d hired a website designer, and also allocated half of the showroom as gallery space for local artists. It encouraged them to get their work framed in-house. A large part of his inherited clientele were people bringing in faded photographs from their attics and closets. Aunt So-and-So and Uncle Fred lighting candles on a birthday cake, and their bucktooth kid in his Little League uniform. Randy and his employees were tasked with choosing the right matte and frame to preserve these pictures in a way that made their owners forget Uncle Fred’s ugly temper and his gambling habit and simply admire his shiny pompadour.

“On good days,” Randy explained, “I feel like we are performing an important, existential service, containing and filtering people’s lives and relatives into a positive light. On bad days, I feel like a huckster, a manipulator of selective memories.”

Why all this sudden philosophizing? “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Randy said.

Mike Thomas winked and adjusted his butt on the barstool and ordered another shot of Old Crow. Randy signaled to the bartender and said, “I’ll have one of those too, please.”

Waz Wasserman fell asleep sometime around 2 a.m. He slept like the proverbial rock. When he woke up at 8:30, oh shit, couldn’t remember a thing about getting Mike Thomas back to his hotel, much less how he got himself home. Wait, no, correction: he wasn’t home. He was lying on the frayed, mouse-eaten couch in the granny flat behind the Picture Perfect frame shop. Sunlight flowing through the curtains. How did this happen?

He stumbled downstairs into the alley. He had forgotten his shoes. No big deal. He turned the corner and proceeded on three blocks to his house. He stripped and stepped carefully into the shower and stayed for a long time. He toweled off and forced himself through half of his daily exercise routine. A pot of coffee and his standard bowl of yogurt and banana, mixed with flaxseed, improved the situation. He tried emailing and texting Mike Thomas, but received no answer. He tried the hotel, but kept getting a recorded message. He tried dialing a phone number scrawled on a cocktail napkin in his pants pocket. It rand and rang and turned out to be “not in service at this time”.

Randy rummaged in his closet and selected a tweed suit and one of his snappiest ties in order to feel put together for this morning’s breakfast group meeting. Catching a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror at the end of the hallway, ouch again, bad framing. He could finally see what Anna was talking about. Definitely out of his league. Ever since being elected vice-president of his fifth grade class, Randy Wasserman had aspired to keeping his eye on the ball, to doing the right thing. Suddenly it felt pointless, a charade, and the realization stung. His head ached. His chest felt tight. His neck throbbed. Randy backpedaled into the bedroom and grabbed for his water glass and aspirin bottle. He tossed down two pills, extra strength, just in case.

The guys at the Waffle House had a long laugh about Randy and Mike’s boozy night out. Cliff said. “At least you didn’t try to take the waitress home.”

Marvin said, “As far as he knows.”

“Little chance of that at this stage,” George said.

“Sounds like Mike Thomas is probably in worse shape than you,” Cliff said.

“Yeah, but here’s the thing,” Randy said, “All of my attempts to get in touch with him this morning have gone nowhere. No replies to texts or emails, phone numbers disconnected. I finally got a hold of the hotel where I thought he was staying and they have no record of him. It’s almost like he doesn’t actually exist, like last night was a mirage.”

Marvin gobbled down his omelet and opined, “As if he’s a manifestation from your unconscious, a projection from an earlier side of the self who surfaces because there is an unresolved issue… maybe with Anna?”

Randy tried to laugh, but it was too painful. He shook his head and mumbled, “That does sound like something Anna would say.”

Cliff interceded. He poured more coffee into Randy’s cup and said, “Wherever this Mike Thomas is, most likely he’s still sleeping it off.”

By late afternoon, Randy felt steady enough to call Anna. It would help to commiserate about his misadventure. When she answered the phone, it became apparent that he was catching her at a bad time. One of those brain-fade episodes, in and out, when the symptoms makes it hard to track a basic conversation.

“Tell me who this is again?” she said.

“It’s me, your husband,” he said, “Waz.”

“That sort of rings a bell,” she said.

“We used to dance together,” he said.

“Right, of course, yes,” she said vaguely.

Randy attempted to describe the meeting with Mike Thomas and his waking up in the granny flat and Marvin’s clinical take on it all. Anna chuckled and said, “So, was this Mike Thomas person a nice guy?”

“He seemed to be,” Randy said.

“You used to be a nice guy,” Anna said.

“Well, thank you for that.”

“Sorry, just a minute… somebody else is talking to me.”

Clunk! The phone landed on a countertop. Randy heard Anna grumble and swear and move to a nearby device. She started barking orders to Siri. Incomprehensible gibberish followed, interspersed with Siri announcing that she was unable to fulfill the request to play ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ backwards.

Anna returned the phone, sounding semi-normal. She said, “Excuse me, what were we discussing?”

Randy swiveled in his desk chair and gazed out the window at the storage building behind the shop. He cleared his throat and said, “I want to make you an offer.”

“Is this a free offer, or is it going to cost me?”

“All expenses paid.”

“Once a business guy…” Anna said. “That was our problem. You were always all-business.”

Randy forged ahead. He said, “Look, I don’t know very much about your life out there. I don’t know what kind of friends or support system you have. But, what with us getting on in years, you might need a caregiver one of these days. Maybe sooner rather than later. Remember what happened with your parents? We’ve said that we don’t want Curt to be burdened with that job.”

“What are you trying to tell me?” Anna said.

“Here’s the offer. The granny-flat behind the shop is still empty. It’s all yours if you want. No pressure. I’ll leave you alone. There are plenty of our classmates still around who would be happy to team up and make sure your needs are met.”   

The silence on the phone lasted a few minutes. It was not grim or onerous. It seemed to softly collapse and minimize the three thousand mile physical distance between them. They listened to each other breathing.

“Think about it,” Randy said.

He signed off as he heard the automatic buzz of the doorbell at the front of the shop. Taking several deep breaths, he pulled a pocket comb from inside his jacket. He ran it through his thinning hair and stood and walked out to meet the customer. It took a moment.  She was half-hidden behind a scarf and sunglasses. He recognized her large purse. She was local artist who had been part of a group show at the Picture Perfect Gallery, a couple of years back. The one who always carried an enormous purse.

She reached into her purse and pulled out two torn halves of a faded photograph that looked to be at least a century old. It featured an awkward young couple on the deck of a steamship with the Statue of Liberty behind them. The woman held the two halves together and explained, believe it or not, this smiling couple was her maternal great-grandparents, newly arrived from Italy. It pictured them in better days. Her great-grandfather turned out to be an angry ne’er-do-well, who had ripped the photograph during a fight, before abandoning the family in the Depression. The great-grandmother had saved the torn halves and tucked them between pages of her Bible, which had been handed down through several generations. Yesterday, while dusting a bookshelf, this woman picked up the Bible and the two halves of the photograph fell out onto the floor. She wondered if it would be possible to mount and frame it in way that the rip was minimally visible?

Randy promised to see what he could do.

– Ian Woollen