#4

It started in the middle of Bat's lips. He had been frowning, his eyes diverted from me as he let out a sigh, but I saw the very beginning of it.

The smile spread across his face like a cheap PowerPoint transition, and I realized immediately that he had been pulling my leg like a pinball machine plunger.

"For crying out loud, Alex, you are gullible," he sneered in triumph. "Hey, while I got you here, there's this oceanfront property I have in Arizona that I wanted to show you. We can take my private jet, or, if you prefer, my teleporter.

Not only had he fooled me, he'd scared me; and then he rubbed it in. I tried to brush it off with a joke.

"Funny you should call me a word that isn't even in the English language, Bat," I said. "'Gullible' isn't even in the dictionary, but here you are, an English major, using it."

I was just trying to joke around to save face, so imagine my surprise when he went ahead and reached into his bag for the dictionary he carries to some of his writing classes to thwart the efforts of his sadistically anal-retentant teachers.

"Oh yeah, Alex?" he accepted my challenge, licked his digits and thumbed through the pages. "Look what we have here."

"G"

"G-U"

"G-U-L-L, the bird," he continued with the same carnivorous grin, "which I will flip you in just a sec... oh here we are: G-U-L-L-I-B-L-E. Gullible, defined as 'easily deceived or duped...'"

"BUT I'm certain a picture of you would suffice there Bat," I interrupted. "You did, after all, have to look it up."

I wasn't sure which of us was more surprised that he fell for it.

"Alex, that's harsh," he moaned.

"Whatever," I figured I should ride this streak of luck as best I could. "So, where'd you go to get the radiator fixed in Council Grove?"

"This auto shop that was near the grade school; I called my dad and he told me they do great cooling system work," he answered, without even checking his own story. "I can vouch for that now, they saved me and Katie on a Sunday."

It was at that moment he realized I had caught him. His eyes went to the table, then back up to me, again with the unspoken apology.

I had just figured that if the Wildcat story was false, so was the tire. Bat was an thoroughly honest person most of the time, his lies are few but they are not far between. In fact, they tend to clump together for a nice little falsehood festival from time to time.

"You know why we were supposed to meet, Bat," I was ready to kill him with words again. "Yesterday marked five years since Reg..."

"I know, damn it, Alex," he busted into my sentence. "Look, I miss Reggie too, and I wanted to toast him and honor him and what he meant and keep our promise, but something came up. Besides, it wasn't that big of a deal."

I was going to mention Reggie earlier on, but I didn't have the nerve.

Reggie Fairchild, Bat, and I had been good friends our sophomore year of High School. We sat on the bench together in football, basketball, and played golf together even though our school didn't have a team for it.

One night that fall, we went together to see a school play about World War II. It centered around these three soldiers, one of whom dies at the end of the first act. In the second act, the two survivors run into each other exactly five years after the fateful battle that took their friend. They sit down, share a few beers and talk about their friend, themselves, their lives, and their futures. They toast all four.

The third act was a dull, poorly written pile of excrement. Well, at least the first ten minutes were, cause after that us three had walked out.

As crept out of that theater, Reggie started talking about how hard-hitting it was to see a part of this circle of friends be broken, and how inspiring it was to see it come back together like that. He was almost disturbed over it, but much to my regret I didn't pursue the reason.

The next day, Reggie played five games of Russian Roulette, with a final score of four and one. We know this because he either forgot to stop the tape after recording his last will, or wanted to let it be known that it took chance five shots at point-blank range to take him out.

His girlfriend had dumped him three days before for his older brother; he found out by catching them together in his bed. It turned out she had just used Reggie to make the guy jealous and come after her, which had been her plan all along. Reggie never told anyone out of shame, he just let it eat him hollow before he collapsed in on himself. He never even made a peep for help.

The tape was played in private to me, Bat, and his brother, the three people he said on the tape that he wanted to listen to it besides his parents. He forgave his brother, but not his ex-girlfriend. He told his family to give his clothes and anything else of his they didn't want to charity. And he asked me and Bat to remember the second act of that play.

Mercifully, his parents stopped the tape when he cocked his dad's old .357 Magnum revolver the first time.

Bat and I agreed to honor Reggie as he had asked, his brother joined the army and finally died fighting in Iraq after years of trying to pay in kind for his brother's demise.

"So, what was so great you missed out on toasting Reggie?" I said after a long, dull pause.

"Well, me and Katie went out for lunch yesterday," he droned on, seeming afraid of where the answer would take both of us, "then we went back to her place to study for a while and then, well, we got to, ah, um..."

I stopped him there. This was an answer I didn't want to have spelled out.