ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 66: Great Ball of Fire

Bella rings my doorbell. She’s in her signature look, a tunic — tonight it’s lavender — over black leggings. She has a big collection of colorful tunics.

We walk to Willow Park for its Sunday evening concert. Three guys dressed in ’50s rock style are playing Elvis, Patsy Cline, and Jerry Lee Lewis songs. The lead singer wears a baby-blue suit — its wide-lapelled jacket covering a white t-shirt — and swings a guitar that looks out of the ’50s, too, a blaze of white on its curvy black front. Are those spats on his black-and-white shoes? Ernie would know.

The baby-blue man, singing into a mike on a stand, suddenly takes the whole stand in hand and begins dancing with it. Then he tosses aside guitar and stand to stride to the piano, launching into Great Balls of Fire. Banging the keys first with fingers, then elbows, he reaches for the mike stand again and bangs the keys with it.

Couples dancing on the concrete square in front of the bandstand stop their dancing to watch him, gasping when the singer himself suddenly hops atop the keys, rippling them with his shoe-clad feet. He throws off his jacket, brings out a comb, flicks back his pompadoured hair, then goes back to rippling the keys with his shoe-clad feet.

Bella’s moving to the music, a big smile on her face. I’m moving, too. The dancers are dancing again. The music’s moving everyone. It makes me feel alive.

I want Ernie here. He would love this. Maybe we’d dance. For sure, after the concert he’d talk to the pompadoured piano man. Then, the music still playing within us, we’d head home, hand in hand. At least, in my wishes we would.

Bella and I walk back to our building. We ride the elevator to the seventh floor. She goes down the hall to her apartment, to be greeted by her two long-haired cats. I let myself into my place.

The living room is dark. I switch on a lamp. I look to the camelback fronting the windows — Ernie’s place.

No Ernie. No great ball of fire. Where did all that fire go?