She turns toward me as the gate to her back yard screeches, and my first reaction is that she can’t be the same girl, that I got bad information.  This woman’s hair is streaked with gray, she’s getting a little jowly, and her waist is thick.  Then I see the little dents on either side of her nostrils, and I know she’s Patty, and the eyes are still sixteen if I ignore the puffiness beneath them.  She’s holding a wooden-handled shovel and is sweaty in the Indian summer heat of this late October afternoon. I’m sweating, too, in my white suit, which looks fine way out in LA but ridiculous here.  She puts up a hand to shade her eyes from the low sun.  She steps forward, leaves crackling under her feet.  I smile as I approach, but she says--with more twang than I remember--“I don’t care what you’re sellin’.  Magazines.  Some miracle cleaner.  A trip to the moon.  You’re wastin’ your time.”

“It’s me, I say, my arms stretching wide as if I expect her to hug me, and maybe I do expect that, but I drop them quickly because she looks startled.

“What?”

“You’re Patty Jones.”

“My name is Pat Wilkes.”

“It’s me . . . . I tap my chest with the fingertips of my left hand.

She blinks three times, once for each decade.  “Who are . . . ?  You? What are you doin’ here?”

She’s frowning.  The ground is soft from recent rains, and I feel myself sinking into it.

“You look well,” I say. And she does.  She looks okay--for her age.

She stares at me, her face blank.  I focus on her eyes and then on her full lips, tiny lines radiating out from them.  She’s not the only one wondering why I’m here. 

Fidgeting, I say, “You have a nice place.  I wave at the fenced-in back yard with a couple of oaks, a big maple, an overgrown bush of some kind, at the small ranch house with peeling white clapboards and brick facade, a carport housing a beat-up Ford Escort.

She looks at something behind her and then back at me.  “You a lawyer?”  She nods at my suit and tie.

“Why, no.”

“You always talked about bein’ a lawyer.”

“I changed my mind freshman year of college.”  Then I grin and say in my best TV-commercial voice, “But I’ve played one on TV.”

“What?  What you mean?”

“I’m an actor.”

“An actor?”

“Yeah.  I live in Los Angeles.  You ever watch Law and Order?”

“Jesse and me seen it a couple times.  You on that show?”

“I was once.  Not long ago.  I got killed though, so I won=t be back.  You ever see Medium? Or Bones?” 

She shakes her head.  “I watch American Idol, but that’s about it.” 

“I’ve been in a few movies.  My characters always get killed, it seems.”

She nods. “So why you here?”

I notice a mound of dirt a few feet behind her, and I smell mold and rotted leaves and newly turned soil.

“I’ve thought about you a lot over the years.”  I look at her hands on the handle of the shovel.  I had forgotten how small they were.  “Always wondered how you made out.  Wondered if you saw the local newspaper stories.  My sister still sends me copies when they do a story about me.”

“Me and Jesse don=t get the paper.”

“Jesse?  That your husband?”

“Yeah.  Jesse Wilkes.”

“Oh.  What does he do?”

She purses her lips, deepening those tiny lines.  Her eyes slit.  “Well, he sure as hell ain’t no movie star.”

“Oh, I’m no star.”

She drops the shovel, which thuds dully when it hits the soft ground, and she puts her hands on her hips.  “You good buddies with all the big stars?”

I notice how heavy her breasts are, and I remember old exciting things and feel an ache in the pit of my nervous, empty stomach.

Eagerly, I say, “I’ve worked with Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman.”

“Gene who?”

“Hackman.  He was--"

The wild squeal of a loose fan belt and knocking pistons stops me.  I turn and see an old Dodge, smoking and belching, waddle into the bare-dirt parking space to the side of the carport.

She doesn’t say a thing, but she’s looking up sideways at me now, her eyes small and black.

A bulky middle-aged man gets out of the Dodge, bangs the door shut three times before it catches.  As he comes at us with his arms out far from his sides like a gunslinger I played in a low-budget western years ago, he hollers, “You sellin’ that miracle cleaner again?”

She hollers back.  “He ain’t sellin’.”

He stops a few feet away, and we look each other over.  His belly sags over the waist of his jeans.  His t-shirt has grease stains on it.  His hands are dirty.  Looking not at me but at her, he says, “That bottled miracle cleaner of yours didn’t work for shit.”

I say, “No.  I’m--”

She tells him my name.  “You know?  From school?”

“I guess you’re Jesse,” I say, finding a little twang in my own voice and extending my hand.  He turns his palms up to show me how filthy his hands are.  For whatever reason, I find myself taking note that I’m in way better shape and look fifteen years younger than he does.

“What you doin’ out here?” he asks her and points at the shovel on the ground.

“Puff died.”

His round shoulders slump.  “Ohhhhh.  I’m sorry, baby. I know you loved that damn cat.  I’m so sorry, baby.  You all right?”    

“I cried all mornin’.  I couldn’t bring myself to bury him till a little while ago.  I’m over it now.  Now we got to be ready for a big scene when the grandchildren come over.”

“You have grandchildren?” I blurt out.

“Yeah, we got six,” he says looking at me.

“That’s great.”  I think of my wife, who wasn’t even born when I was a high-school senior and Patty was a sophomore.  “I’m sorry about your cat.”

She flips a thumb at me. “He’s a movie star in Hollywood.  Did you know that?”

“I heard somethin’ about it.  He was in some movie with Tom Cruise.”

“I had only six lines in that one.  Anyway, I’m certainly glad to meet you, Jesse.”

He slits his eyes at me.  “I member you from school.  I was two years behind you.  So what brings you here?”

“Well . . . well, you know, I’ve been asking myself that same question.”  My twang is coming back strong.  “I just got to wondering about what became of some people from my younger days. For a while in high school Patty and I . . . .”  I stop because of the way he’s glaring at me, his face suddenly so brilliantly red I’m thinking he’s going to have a stroke.

“I oughta split your head open,” he says.

“What?  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean anything.”

“I know why you’re here.  She”--and he stabs a meaty forefinger at his wife”--was your first piece of ass, and you just can’t forget about it, and you think maybe you’d like to see if she still thinks about it, too.”

“Now, Jesse, don’t you go gettin’ worked up.”

He turns on her.  “Maybe you wanta go off to Hollywood with him and--”

“Hey,” I say.  “It’s nothing like that.  I’m happily married.”

“I member in school”--he spits, waving his thick hand at both me and his wife--“you and her . . . .  I member her writin’ her first name on her notebooks with your last name after and ‘Mrs.’ in front.  Bunch of little hearts all over.”  His yellow teeth bared, he says “hearts” as if nothing in this world is more obscene.

“All the girls did that when we were kids,” I say, smiling hard.

“I member, you son of bitch.”  He steps close enough I can feel his hot breath full of cigarettes and whiskey.  “And you broke her heart. I member her cryin’ next to her locker, and I asked her what was wrong cause I was her friend, and she says get away.  I member it like yesterday.  Like yesterday, you prick.  Those lockers were painted fire-engine red.  But I kept pesterin’ her cause I was her friend, and she says she wants to kill herself.”  Tears well up in his eyes.  “I oughta split your head open for comin’ here.” 

“Hey, we’re talking about something that happened thirty years ago,” I say.

“Then why the hell you here?”  He slashes me across the chest with his fat finger, leaving a smear of dirt that starts at the left lapel of my white suit coat and runs at a downward angle for a foot until it fades out.  He steps back, trembling.  “But she got over you right quick enough.  I made sure of that.”  He steps close again.  “You coulda married her.”

She’s staring back at the mound of dirt where she buried Puff, and she seems younger now, almost that girl she was.

I’m tempted to confess that there have been days when I wish I had married her, days when I’ve been alone and feeling sorry for myself and feeling like the biggest fool on earth and days when I have fought with or been dumped by one of my four wives or one of so many lovers I can’t count them. 

Still looking at the grave, she says, “We were just kids, Jesse.  Dumb kids.”

Stepping toward her, he spits back, “So was you and me.  So was you and me.”  Turning to me again, he repeats, “I married her.  You’re too damn late,” slashing the air with that fat finger.  “You coulda been me.”  He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.  “But you’re not.”

I look at her.  “I just wondered how you were doing, Patty.”

She gives me a look as hard as that shovel blade and says, “I don=t know who you’re lookin’ for, mister, or what . . . but Patty ain’t here.”

As I’m walking to my rental car parked by the curb out front, the low sun burns in my eyes, and the neighborhood kids playing kick ball on the crumbling asphalt of the dead-end street all look at me.  They’re laughing, and a red-headed kid with a rash of freckles blotching his broad face says, “Hey, mister,” but I ignore him and get in the car.  He keeps saying, “Hey, mister, hey, mister,” until I get the car started and drive away.