I practically ran down the hallway when it was my turn.
I heard Charlie coming after me, and I thought about demanding he hurry up so we could lock the door, but I stopped when I looked around his room.
It was small. There was a queen-sized bed with an old nightstand next to it. Atop it was a book missing its jacket sleeve. The open closet was larger than I expected, and half of it was filled with leather and some soft fetish gear.
But it was the framed photographs on one of the walls that caught my eye. There had to be a dozen of them. A few were grainy and sepia-toned, with crinkles through the middle. There was young Charlie, strong and handsome, standing in front of a motorcycle with a man I didn’t recognize. There was another that appeared to be a few years later. In it, Charlie was standing on a sidewalk in front of a familiar bar entrance. Oh, it’d long since been updated, but I still knew it for what it was.
Charlie had a thick mustache and wore tight jeans and an even tighter black tank top. His hair was cut almost militarily short, and the muscles in his arms bulged as he crossed them over his chest. He wore a cap similar to the one he’d given Paul. It was cocked jauntily on his head. He was glowering around a cigar in his mouth.
And next to him was Vaguyna Muffman.
I’d seen a few pictures of her before. Sandy had shown me some after I’d met him. I didn’t appreciate it as much as I should have, given that I was a seventeen-year-old asshole. I’d seen them once more after I moved back. I’d been digging through the hall closet, trying to find a cable Sandy needed to set up a TV in my bedroom. I accidentally knocked over a box, spilling photos to the ground. I’d gone through a few of them, seeing young Sandy wearing far too much makeup, Vaguyna smiling in the background, but I’d put them away before too long. It felt like I was invading something private, something that wasn’t meant for me to see.
Vaguyna w
as beautiful in the photograph on Charlie’s wall. She was taller than him, but I couldn’t tell if that was because of her heels. She was pressed against his side, her hands gripping one of his biceps. She had a devilish grin, and one of her legs was bent up and back, the spike of her heel almost pressed against her butt. She had a feather boa wrapped around her neck. She wore a sequined black leotard that accentuated her curves. Her cleavage looked full, pressed on Charlie’s arm.
There were other photos. More recent ones. I saw Paul’s family smiling. I saw all of us standing in Sandy’s backyard. I saw Sandy sitting on Charlie’s lap. I saw Paul and Vince at their wedding, foreheads pressed together as they danced. I saw two children I didn’t recognize. They looked eerily like Charlie, but that felt like dangerous ground.
But it was the one of him and Vaguyna I kept coming back to. Until I saw the one right next to it.
It was Robert.
He was sitting on a park bench, his hands atop his cane in front of him, his fedora tilted back on his head. His eyes were closed and he was smiling quietly, the lines around his eyes carved deep.
The fact that these two pictures were right next to each other was not lost on me.
I heard the door close.
I looked back over my shoulder.
Charlie was watching me. “Memories,” he said. “Sometimes they can be a burden. But other times, they can be something good.”
I nodded at the photo of him and Vaguyna. “That’s in front of Jack It, right?”
He nodded. “It is. Back in the summer of 1994.”
“She was beautiful.”
He smiled. “She was. And she knew it too.”
“Did you take the one of Robert?” I asked.
“I did,” Charlie said, going to his closet. “Last month. It’s my favorite picture of him.”
“I’m up here a lot,” I said. I didn’t know why I was so surprised.
Charlie frowned at me over his shoulder. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
I shrugged. I couldn’t find the right words to say how important it was to me that I mattered enough to him to be up there with everyone else. “I just… it’s nice.”
“Foolish,” he muttered as he resumed digging in the closet. “Of course you would be up there. Now, I need you to tell me what you’d be comfortable with wearing, and I’ll see what we can come up with. I can make a few calls if needed, since we’re not going until tomorrow, but I think we’ll be all right.”
“Why do you have so much?” I asked curiously. “Especially something that would fit me. We’re not exactly the same size.”
He snorted. “That’s because you’re a twig.”
“Hey!”