“It was late afternoon, and the sky was this dark shade of blue you don’t ever see in New Jersey. The light kept changing. Every few minutes it was like a whole new landscape. A sight like that makes you open up. I told them things I haven’t even told you , and you’re my best friend.”
“Shut up,” Eric said, and looked away.
“Well, you are. It shouldn’t embarrass you to hear it.”
“I ain’t embarrassed.” But Eric was still looking over at the Jimi Hendrix poster.
“Yeah, you are. See, there’s your problem. You’re a hell of a guy but you’ll never admit it.”
Eric looked back at Ramsey. “So what’d you tell them at the Grand Canyon?”
Ramsey smiled. “I told them the truth.”
“Care to elaborate?”
It occurred to Ramsey that maybe Allie had confided in Eric. She was the only person he’d ever told about the orbital axis. If she told Eric, it would be a betrayal, but a minor one, done out of her love and concern. She knew that Eric held sway with Ramsey, and for good reason. Were it not for him, Ramsey would still be some angry shitbag drifting from job to job, some legal, some not—-except, now he’d be a thirty-four-year-old shitbag, which was a lot less forgivable than being an eighteen- or a twenty-year-old one.
“It means,” Ramsey said, “that I told them they better take in all this beauty while they can, cause it won’t be here forever.”
“You told them the Grand Canyon won’t be here forever?”
“Nothing will. Not me or you or this garage or the Grand Canyon, neither.”
“Ramsey Miller, philosopher.”
“Bust my balls if you want, but those kids taught me something. I offered them a few dollars for the weed I’d smoked, but they wouldn’t take it. The guy, after college he plans to join the Peace Corps. He said the key to life is magnanimity. Can you beat that? His word. It means generous.”
“I know what it means.”
Ramsey doubted this but let it go. “He says if you have magnanimity, it comes back to you twofold. Sure enough, we’d just started back up the trail. It was steep and not an easy climb—you know that means something, coming from me—and the girl he’s with, she steps funny on a rock and twists her ankle, bad. I’ll tell you, once the sun goes down it gets real cold in the desert. This time of year, it goes below freezing. So they’d of been in real trouble. They didn’t have provisions or nothing. Just that one jug of water, and we’d already finished most of it off.”
“But they had you.”
Ramsey smiled, remembering. “Me and the boy took our time, making sure every step was in the right place. We got his friend up to the rim, safe and sound.”
“The Lord had a plan for you that day.”
That wasn’t Ramsey’s point at all, but he stopped himself from correcting his friend. “Afterward, when I was driving, I kept thinking about those two. I shouldn’t call them kids, because they weren’t kids. But I kept thinking about them, and about magnanimity. And that’s when I realized we’re doing this gig all wrong. It shouldn’t be just for us—our families and whatnot. We need to invite everyone.”
“Who’s ‘everyone’?”
“Everyone in the neighborhood.”
“You hate everyone in the neighborhood,” Eric said.
“That’s my point—we need to come together. Listen, I know there’s people who don’t think much of me, and for a long time I didn’t care. Or I did, but it was easier to pretend I didn’t. But that ain’t how I want it anymore.”
“And you think a party will fix everything?”
“Ain’t a matter of fixing things—it’s about doing what’s right. I want people coming to my house, eating my food and drinking my beer and listening to Rusted Wheels. I want their kids trampling my lawn.”
Eric glanced at the door separating the garage from the rest of the house. “Ramsey, I have to ask. How much does Allie know about this plan of yours?”
“Haven’t had time to fill her in