Lush Life (61 page)

In a ballooning rage he began to pace the floor, saw a girl roughly Eddie's age, doughy, not too bright-looking, but with the vacant wariness of the runaway in her eyes, then saw, or imagined he saw, the hunters, quiet, alert, solo, moving cautiously, patiently, and he decided that something had happened to his son.

"Lindsay, it's me again. Call me. Please."

She rang back twenty minutes later.

"Where is he?"

"You were waiting for the four-fifteen? He missed that bus."

"Where is he, do you know where he is?"

"Yeah, he got on the next one. Should be getting into New York in about three hours."

"And you couldn't bother to call and tell me this?"

"He said he would."

"Well, he fucking didn't and I'm standing here like a maniac."

"He said he'd call. What can I tell you?"

Matty seething, I don't need this, I don't want this.

"What is wrong with this kid?"

"I don't know, Matty, maybe his phone's dead, maybe he spaced out, I don't live in his head."

"Give me his number." Taking it down on his steno pad in the same hurried chicken scratch of a million vital stats for a hundred thousand crimes on ten thousand nights. "What time's his bus get in?"

"Seven-thirty about," Lindsay said, then, "Enjoy," signing off in that gallingly unnecessary singsong.

Matty sat on a bench next to the runaway girl, possible runaway girl, thought about saying something to her, decided against it. From across the hall a middle-aged man began to approach, giving Matty a long, wary look all the way, Matty feigning obliviousness but primed. Before this character reached the bench, however, the girl rose to greet him, throwing her arms around his neck, the guy saying into her hair, "Mom's on pins and needles," then raising his head to give Matty one last good eyeballing.

Embarrassed, Matty briefly looked away, then turned back to watch them as they negotiated the crowd, as they evaporated into sunlight.

He remembered Minette telling him the other day how hard it had been for Billy to leave his first wife and son for her and her daughter; as for himself, however, the toughest thing about splitting from Lindsay and the kids was how nauseatingly easy it had been.

He stared at the phone in his hands, then started to dial the Other One's cell, ready to rip this kid a new one, lay down the law, but wound up killing the call before it could ring through.

Seven-thirty: three hours from now. He decided to sit there and wait, do it face-to-face.

CURFEW is ten o'clock on weekdays, midnight on weekends-Sunday night is a weekday because it emptys into MONDAY MORNING

LIQUOR is FORBIDEN in this house including my private stock which is OFF LIMITS

NO DRUGS this should not even be necessary for me to say it