A Better Goodbye (35 page)

What had she been thinking about? Sleeping with a guy who killed somebody? Come on, you know? Even if it was an accident, what kind of sport would let someone do that? And what kind of guy would—no, Jenny wasn't going to start on Nick. He had too many scars already, the ones she could see stitched on his face and the ones she knew were on his soul just by looking into his sad eyes. But she couldn't handle seeing him today, not when her head was a ball of day-after confusion.

Sleep was Jenny's favorite pastime. She was going to stay in bed as long as she could, the way she had after her mother died, when she was just trying to keep it together, no family in America to fall back on, only an old lady who rented her an apartment above a garage. Six years later, with the covers over her head, moving in and out of sleep, it felt as though trouble couldn't find her. There were none of the stories she'd read when she Googled Nick, the tragic ones about what he'd done to another boxer and the heroic one about his punching out a gangbanger who tried to rob him when he was delivering beer.

Jenny was still wondering what that was all about when she climbed out of bed as afternoon crept toward evening. He hadn't told her anything about himself, really. Maybe he was worried that too much talking would start him thinking about the man he'd killed, the man Jenny couldn't get off her mind. Every time she thought about him, it brought her back to her questions about Nick.

A check of her caller ID told her that Maria had phoned—they always unblocked their numbers for each other—and that the fifteen other calls had been anonymous except for Rachel from school. She guessed that Sierra had made at least a half-dozen of the calls, and she hoped that Barry was among the others. It was the first time he'd been more than a passing thought since she and Nick got horizontal, and here Barry had been a viable candidate to become the epicenter of her life. But she had finally given in to the realization that this wasn't the time to be thinking about anything resembling a relationship. She worked in a jack shack, she wasn't trolling on eHarmony.

With that in mind, Jenny put off checking her voicemail until almost six-thirty, deleting her e-mail unread, flipping through books without focusing on the pages, watching just enough reality shows on TV to remember how easy they were to hate. She saved Maria's and Rachel's messages for later without listening to them, but she couldn't resist playing the increasingly hysterical pleas Sierra had left, the gist of them being that Scott would be really pissed if she flaked out. Sierra called her Coco, a name that already seemed to belong to the past. Jenny shed it like cheap lingerie every time she left work, and now she wasn't sure she ever wanted to put it on again.

She was behaving as if she'd given up massage. It surprised her, but it felt right. Everything about the business now seemed too weird and complicated for her to handle, and if that meant her lawyer would have to wait for the rest of his money, she was sure it wouldn't be the first time for him. The important thing, she decided, was for her to stay home and chill out, to make a cup of tea and give some serious thought to what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

Her phone rang again. Another blocked number. She checked for a message almost reflexively and found herself listening to Barry say he was on his way over to make sure she was all right. “No,” she said aloud, and barely heard her teakettle whistling.

Now she hated herself for letting him this far into her life, in a weak moment brought on by the illusion of romance, an urge to hold a man's heart in her hands, instead of his johnson. Her first impulse was to leave. She was already wearing jeans and a sweater; all she had to do was grab a hoodie and step into her sandals. She could come up with an excuse later—or pretend Barry never happened. It wouldn't be anything she hadn't done before.

She was wondering if this time would make her feel worse than the others, when someone buzzed her from the building's outer door. Barry already? Well, too bad if it was. She wasn't answering for anybody. She would just wait until the buzzing stopped and the unwanted visitor gave up. When she finally checked the water for her tea, she felt lucky it hadn't boiled away. She filled a cup, the heat from the steam stinging her hand, and put in a tea bag, hoping whoever was downstairs would leave soon. She was in no mood for games, and she didn't care who—

The pounding was on her front door now, shattering whatever resolve her pep talk had provided. It had to be the same person who buzzed. He must have kept trying apartments until a tenant who just wanted the damned buzzing to stop let him in. Funny how she automatically assumed it was a man. It could just as easily be a woman who thought she was a bitch or a whore or a husband thief. But the way her life had been going lately . . .

And then she was sure it was a man because he was calling for Jenny. It wasn't Barry, though. And Mark, the lurker, had to be too scared to follow her home after Nick—wait, that was who it was.
Oh, God,
she thought,
is he going to be one of those guys who thinks he's in love with me just because I slept with him?

Jenny moved cautiously to the door and looked at Nick through the peephole. His expression was as desperate as his voice: “Jenny? Open up, Jenny! Come on, you got to open up!”

She knew he was right, though for a reason that likely hadn't occurred to him. She had to open up or the apartment manager would yell at her. He might even call the cops.

“One second,” she said, keeping her voice down.

When she opened the door, Nick skipped hello and said, “You all right?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “How did you find out where I live? I never—”

Across the hall, behind Nick, she could see one of her neighbors peeking out at the commotion, a Russian woman barely six months in the country. She was trying to hold back her two small children while she satisfied her curiosity.

“You better come in,” Jenny said.

“Yeah,” he said, taking a last glance over his shoulder before he entered. “But not for long.”

“What are you talking about? I mean, why are you here, anyway? I never told you my address.”

“Sierra described your building and I started hunting for it. Now come on, you got to get out of here. You and Barry if he's with you.”

Nick's eyes swept the living room and kitchen with a frantic intensity that unsettled Jenny. She was starting to feel like she'd taken bad acid.

“Well, he's not,” she said. “Not that it's any of your business.”

“Look, I don't care if he is here,” Nick said, eyeing the closed door to the bedroom.

You don't?
Jenny thought, surprised that she was disappointed. But what she said was, “I'm not lying.”

Nick looked back at her, holding up his left hand as if he were trying to stop the hostility. “I'm sorry, all right?” he said. “I just came to take you someplace safe.”

“You're not making any sense,” Jenny said. “Why would I, like, run off with you?”

“Scott and that guy with the dog—”

“DuPree.”

“They're going to rob Barry, and if you're with him when they do, you could get hurt.”

It was all Jenny could do to say, “You really expect me to believe that?”

“Sierra says Scott's got a gun.”

“And you believe
her
?”

“This time, yeah, I do. DuPree's probably got one too. You want to hang around so you can find out how crazy those two assholes are?”

“Come on,” Jenny said. “I like you, Nick, I really do. But all I did was fuck you. I didn't, like, pledge my undying love.”

Nick didn't flinch.

“Congratulations,” he said. “But this isn't about that. It's about your life.”

“Right.”

“You believed I was going to take care of you in that goddamn jack shack, didn't you? When those psychos were out raping massage girls?”

“Yeah.”

“And you remember me chasing away poor fucking Mark and looking after you when DuPree shook you up so bad?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, what's coming down with DuPree and Scott is worse than all that shit combined. You hear what I'm saying?”

Jenny felt helpless, the carefully tended components of her life suddenly thrown into a centrifuge.

“Jenny,” Nick said, “we got to go now.”

Her head spun worse than ever, and everything else about her was paralyzed.

“Dammit, please,” he said.

His tone made her focus again. It went beyond the fear generated by the moment and the sorrow in which he preserved his past. It was as if he were telling her he finally had a chance to do something good within his reach, if only she would let him do it. She didn't know what he would ask in return. She didn't know if it mattered.

“Okay,” she said, in a voice so small it barely registered on her own ears.

The next thing she knew, he was wrapping a hand around her arm and steering her toward the door. Her first steps seemed awkward, almost robotic. She wondered if the rhythm of escape was in her.

They would have run down the front steps and around the corner if Jenny hadn't been wearing those damned sandals. They kept slipping off, but even when she started carrying them, her bare feet weren't much of an improvement. The irritation Nick felt must have shown in his face because she told him, “I'm going as fast as I can.” He didn't reply. He was looking up and down the street for a car he was afraid he wouldn't recognize until it was too late.

He'd parked his pickup in the entrance to an underground garage on the other side of Missouri, uncertain which building was Jenny's until he'd climbed out and seen that dirty-diaper brown up close in the fading light. Now there was someone in a black Toyota Camry stopped behind him. As soon as he saw that it was a woman honking her horn and moving her mouth angrily, he put her out of his mind and resumed looking for DuPree and Scott, who would kill him rather than curse him.

“This is mine,” he told Jenny when they got to the truck. “Get in.”

“What about that lady?” she asked.

“Just get in.”

Nick watched Jenny scoot to the passenger's side. When she had the door open, he began to climb in, only to be stopped by the sound of another horn honking. He spun toward it and saw a Rolls-Royce that had to be Barry's, white ragtop, pale yellow body. He tried to remember if the guy at the wheel was the one he'd seen through the peephole. Yeah, it was, and he was pulling to a stop behind the woman in the Camry, powering down the passenger window and leaning across the seat, shouting, “Jenny!”

“Barry!”

Nick turned and saw Jenny hurrying toward the Rolls. “Dammit,” he said, and moved after her.

The only time the woman in the Camry stopped honking was to lean out her window and yell something at him as he passed her. He couldn't hear what it was, but he nodded anyway. Anything for a few seconds' peace. By the time he reached the Rolls, Jenny was at Barry's open window, telling him, “I'm serious.”

The look on Barry's face said he wasn't buying it. He glanced at Nick and, in a voice both weary and snotty, asked, “Who's this?”

“This is Nick. He's helping us.”

“Yeah, but who is he?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Okay, if I have to spell it out, are you—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Nick said, “or we'll leave you here.”

“What do you know, he talks,” Barry said.

Nick smacked the hood of the car with an open hand and Barry recoiled, wide-eyed. “You want to be an asshole, fine,” Nick said, “but there's two guys looking to rob you, and they've got guns.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“I am. And don't even think about going home and closing the curtains until this is over. That's the first place they'll look.”

“But my wife and kids—”

Barry caught himself and looked at Jenny. Her expression betrayed nothing. It was the woman in the Camry who was visibly pissed off as she resumed honking, the expression on her face suggesting she was on the verge of living out a violent fantasy.

“Come on,” Nick told Jenny. “We're going.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and started moving her toward his pickup, never looking back at Barry. That was for Jenny to do as she tried to keep pace with him.

“No, wait,” Barry said. “I believe you, okay? Just give me one second here.”

He grabbed his black leather briefcase and scrambled out of his Rolls, leaving it half-blocking the entrance to the parking garage. He took one last sad look at it and hurried to catch up with Nick and Jenny while the woman in the Camry shouted out her window at him.

Barry wouldn't look at Jenny when he found himself wedged between her and Nick in the pickup.
He really is a weasel,
Nick thought, but it was the wrong time to make an issue of it. Nick pulled out and sped two blocks, blowing stop signs at both, before he turned left on Sawtelle, into the rush-hour slog. No one uttered a word until Jenny pointed at a restaurant called the Blue Plate and said, “This is far enough.”

Nick angled the truck to the curb and Barry looked at Jenny, disbelief contorting his face. “So close?” he said. “For Christ's sake, they might drive by and see me.”

“Not if you're inside,” Jenny said.

Barry looked at Nick desperately. “Come on, pal, you know this isn't right. You're feeding me to the fucking sharks.”

“Just go in like she told you and call a cab,” Nick said. “You'll be fine.”

When Barry finally started to move, Nick snatched his briefcase. “No,” Barry said, struggling to hang onto it until Nick rapped him on the nose.

“Ow!” Barry said, grabbing his beak, tears coming to his eyes.

“Shut up or I'll hit you again,” Nick said.

That got his attention. Jenny's too.