Page 49 of Going Home in the Dark

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to sell you an idea for a novel. I saw you slide out of the room, and while they’re all distracted, I followed.”

“Distracted?”

“Fred Sanford is arm wrestling Spencer, like he used to do when your friend was a teenager.”

“What is Fred—seventy-five?”

“Seventy-seven, but he keeps winning.”

“Spencer was afraid of Fred,” Bobby said. “He never wanted to arm wrestle the guy, but he was never given a choice.”

“He wasn’t given one this time, either. Did I tell you my name is Warren Weber?”

“You did indeed. Is that true?”

“Yeah. My wife, Mary Kate, and I moved to town a year ago.”

“You’re young for the neighborhood.”

“We don’t live on this block. We’re the last house in the block before this one.”

“So you’re not a Nelsoneer.”

“That’s just it. The Nelsoneers want to expand the club into the next block, our block.”

“It’s a club?”

“It’s something.” Warren Weber seemed as if he were walking a ledge. When the audience for the arm-wrestling contest let out a cheer, he startled, pressed his back harder against the door, and grimaced at the floor as though gazing into a city street from the twentieth story of a high-rise. “Maybe I shouldn’t be talking to you, bothering you.”

“No, that’s okay. I’m interested.”

Weber shifted his stare from the abyss to Bobby. “I mean—do I understand right that you’re not a Nelsoneer?”

“I grew up on the other side of town.”

“But you became friends with Spencer.”

“We had a lot in common. It’s a small town. The other side of it isn’t that far away.”

“Yeah, but he was a Nelsoneer. You had a lot in common with a Nelsoneer?”

“There weren’t Nelsoneers back then. The first time I’ve heard about them is today.”

“Okay, all right, but Spencer’s family lived on this street. He grew up here.”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Bobby assured him. “Anyway, he left a long time ago, and he doesn’t want to be here.”

Weber nodded and chewed his lower lip and flinched when the crowd again cheered the geriatric athletic prowess of Fred Sanford. “Do you think ...”

“Yes, even though it’s painful.” When Weber gave him a blank look, Bobby said, “Sorry. I can be a smart-ass. Do I think what?”

“Isn’t there such a thing as too much neighborliness?”

“This has always been a close neighborhood.”

“It’s something more than close,” Weber said. The wide-flexed irises of his blue eyes presented dark pupils too large for the circumstances, as if some inner darkness prevented him from seeing the light of the room in its fullness. “It’s stifling, suffocating. They’re always asking what errand can they do for you, whether you need anything from the store, would you like to join some of the guys and paint a house free for a Nelsoneer. They have these get-togethers at one house or another every Friday evening, sometimes two nights a week, plus on holidays, and everyone brings food. They have Nelsoneer bridge nights and softball games and flag football—and of course that damn pickleball.”

Bobby said, “I don’t think it was that close back then. If you don’t want to be a Nelsoneer, just tell them so.”

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