The Fives Run North-South by Dan Goodin Page A

Peter got to choose between two bedrooms. One was painted tan, the other gray. He’d said: “One is silver. The other one is gold.”
    “Which one do you want?”
    “Silver.”
    “Why?”
    “Because nothing rhymes with it.”
    Suze had giggled. I’d nodded. “That’s a good reason.”
    “Yup,” he had said. “That and orange.”
    “What if you had to choose between a silver and an orange room?” I’d asked.
    Wrinkling his nose, he’d said: “There’s no orange rooms,” He then went into his new room and jumped up and down, looking around.
    Suze had walked up and put her arm around me. “You like it here, Petey?” she had asked.
    “Uh - huh .”
    We’d put up a poster of the Hulk. That lasted about a year. He wanted dinosaurs next (a dinosaur phase is like required reading — Peter’ s contribution to the young American male stereotype). He never did the sports phase; that was tough on me and made Suze laugh. After dinosaurs he did a round of Star Wars, but not the cool one from the seventies and eighties. He liked the new ones when Darth Vader was a kid and had an anteater for a sidekick. When we did those posters, we repainted his room from gray to pale green.
    “Green rhymes with spleen!” I said. Suze and Peter had looked at me like I was wearing a scout master shirt.
    Now the posters were rock groups. Peter thinks he wants a guitar. I’m not convinced it’s any more permanent than his scouting phase. But at least I let him put up the posters: Green Day. Lifehouse. Led Zeppelin. That one made me laugh — Peter and his best friend had discovered Zeppelin, and Peter had even found a T - shirt online that cost a bit extra because it was made to look thirty years old.
    Soon, we’d probably have to take those down. He wasn’t coming back, not really. It’s not what’s supposed to happen. At some point, you change out the room. It will always be Peter’s room, but you have to take down the things he liked just before he left here because he’s moved on from them. I know that’s the case. It happened with my parents in my old room. It’s happened with a bunch of our friends. I just haven’t got the rules completely straight yet. How long after he leaves do we remove the stuff? What’s the statute of limitations on room conversion? Did I miss a meeting?
    “I’m tired,” Suze said, rousing me from my thoughts. “What the heck are you watching?” I realized I’d stopped flicking the remote and the TV was playing a cooking show.
    “Don’t worry,” I said. “I was aiming for ESPN and missed. Not about to start cooking anytime soon.”
    “You doing okay?” she asked.
    “Yup.” Then after a pause. “Why you asking?”
    She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. “You seem like you’re remembering something funny,” she said.
    I lifted my eyes in surprise. “I kinda was,” I said. “Thinking about how nothing rhymes with silver.”
    She smiled took my hand. Marriage supreme court is in recess. For a while. We turned off the TV and the lights and went to bed.

    The weekend was quiet. We ate out. Went to the movies. Read way too much of the Sunday paper. We called Peter a couple times. It was a nice weekend.
    I left for work Monday, and actually returned home at a fairly early time that evening. Suze was sitting at the counter in the kitchen reading a magazine. “How was it back at the grind?” she asked.
    “Like I never left,” I lied.
    She looked up at my hair. “Sure,” she said. I run my hand through my hair when I’m stressed. She’d learned to read the state of my hair as an indicator of how difficult a day I’d had at work. I looked over at my reflection in the microwave glass and smoothed down my hair. I also looked around the kitchen for any sign of food. My stomach felt both stretched and empty…an odd feeling.
    “I want to go out,” Suze said.
    I didn’t.
    “But you don’t,” she said.
    “How do you know?”
    “You made that face.”
    “No, I didn’t,”