Nine Inches by Tom Perrotta Page A

to come toppling over in the next big storm, trunk and all, as if it were no longer rooted to the ground.
    But the tree’s still here, Gus thought. It was Lonny who had fallen, brought down by a massive heart attack during an a ft ernoon nap in the garage. Gus would have considered it an ideal way to go — no su ff ering, no medical bills, no burdens placed on your loved ones — except that he’d been within listening range of Peggy’s hysterical shrieks upon fi nding the body and had witnessed the frozen look of devastation on her usually proud face as she followed the stretcher out to the ambulance.
    Th e garage door was locked, but that wasn’t a problem — Lonny kept a spare key in a secret compartment at the bottom of a thermometer he’d mounted on the wall above his woodpile. Gus knew this because he and Martha had given Lonny the trick thermometer as a fift ieth-birthday gi ft , back in the days when everyone got along and the passage of time still seemed like cause for celebration.
    THE FIRST thing that struck Gus as he stepped inside the garage was the smell of cigar smoke. Not a faint stale whi ff of it but a concentrated gust, so strong that he expected to turn on the light and fi nd Lonny leaning on the pool table, squinting at the cue ball through a cloud of grayish fumes from the El Producto clamped between his teeth.
    But all he saw, when his groping hand fi nally found the switch, was a large open room, the geography of which was instantly, and deeply, familiar. Th e workshop along the le ft wall — the wrenches, screwdrivers, and hammers all neatly suspended from the pegboard. Some metal storage shelves full of paint cans, power tools, and miscellaneous crap. Beyond that, the old refrigerator where Lonny kept the beer he bought by the case at the Liquor Warehouse. Th e bathroom in the corner, just past the snowblower, which was covered for the season with a brown plastic tarp.
    In the middle of the garage, Lonny had created a makeshi ft den, a few pieces of cast-o ff furniture — foldout sofa, easy chair, end table with a little portable TV on it — arranged in a semicircle around the Franklin stove. Th e game area fi lled the remaining space: Ping-Pong table, pool table, foosball. Th e whole place gave the impression of a fi nished basement that had doggedly burrowed its way above ground.
    As his eyes adjusted to the light, it gradually occurred to Gus that the garage must have remained untouched since the day of Lonny’s death. He told himself to stop gawking, to just in fl ate the pool and get the hell out, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. He felt a small hard ball of grief rise up from his throat, growing as it moved, then burst out of his mouth in a series of sobs that shook his whole body.
    “Oh, Lonny,” he heard himself cry. “Oh, Jesus.”
    •••
    FEELING A bit shaky, Gus sat down on the easy chair and tried to get hold of himself. He wasn’t sure what it was about being here that upset him so much. He wasn’t a superstitious man, didn’t believe in ghosts. Nor did he have any kind of sentimental attachment to the garage itself. Except for one long-gone summer, he had rarely set foot in here for more than a few minutes at a time.
    It must have been 1989, he thought. Th at was the year Martha got laid o ff from Honeywell, and things got tense between them. Lonny wasn’t working, either. He was recovering from knee surgery and was bored out of his skull, puttering around the house all day.
    For a short time — a month, maybe just a couple of weeks — Gus had fallen into the habit of joining Lonny in the garage a ft er supper and staying for several hours, not heading home until he was pretty sure that Martha was asleep, or at least too tired to pick a fi ght.
    What had he and Lonny done on those lazy summer nights? Watched the Yankees, drunk beer, knocked the balls around on the pool table. Listened to country music, which Lonny loved (he had driven an