The Duration (26 page)

“Right! Shit. That's right. The long arm of the law. I'm sure we can get around that, though. Just say you're with me.”

In Jimmer's world, that could probably work.

“It's no problem,” Chick said, sliding Jimmer's backup phone into his pocket. “I can crash with some friends.”

“Who?” I asked. “LaBeau?”

Chickie shrugged, wouldn't look at me. He pushed his untouched plate away.

“Don't worry about it,” he said.

“Let's just go back to the Horse Head,” I said.

Jimmer raised his eyebrows at that. Chick did too. They were mocking my suggestion, and even though I knew Jimmer was on my side and just trying to connect with Chick, it pissed me off.

“I'm fine, dude,” Chick said.

“You're fine?” I asked. “You don't have a phone.”

Chick held up Jimmer's backup phone. I went on.

“You don't have a car. You were just arraigned.” Drawing out “arraigned” into a three-word bit.

“I don't need a car,” Chick said. “I'm fine.”

Stupid fucking fucker.

“How are you fine?” I asked, raising my voice a little. “Seriously. How?”

Jimmer raised his hands from his omelet.

“Okay,” he said. “We're all adults here.”

I pointed to Chick.

“He's not an adult,” I said. “He needs to go back to the Birches. Or give me my money back.”

Chick tossed his fork down and pushed out of the booth, heading for the door. A couple of cops watched us over their bacon, more amused than alarmed. They were on break.

I went after him. Caught him on the sidewalk.

“Dude,” I said, grabbing him by the shoulder. He swung back toward me and put two hands into my chest, a short, sharp shove. Seemed like it took most of the energy he had.

“Get the fuck off me,” he hissed.

I grabbed the sleeve of his coat and wouldn't let go.

“Pete,” he said, his voice shaking. His eyes were black. We'd fought once before, when we were about fourteen. I don't even remember why. He'd thrown a rock at me, hit me in the ear. I'd thrown one back at him, hit him in the shoe. He'd kicked my ass. Back then he fought all in, like a wild animal. But I'd filled out since then. And my aim had improved.

“Where are you going?” I said.

“Let go of me.”

“Where are you going?”

He shook his arm.

“Let. Go.”

“If I let go, will you come back in?”

I don't even know what it was about anymore. We are supposed to grow up, take responsibility for ourselves. Make choices. I felt like I'd been doing a pretty decent job of that over the years. Or maybe not. Depends on who you asked. All I knew right then was, here's this guy, my oldest friend, who'd walked a path right next to me and still managed to get lost. But we'd been together, and were together again. And now he was walking away.

“Will you come back in?”

I knew he wouldn't.

“Stop,” he said. “Just . . . stop.”

He looked at me like he couldn't stand it.

“I don't want your help anymore. You can't help.”

Felt like a slap. Maybe to him too, because he looked away fast.

“There's nothing to help with,” he said.

I let go. He looked down, then turned away.

“Of course there is,” I said. I shouted it, actually, my voice cracking a little, surprised by the rush of emotion. “Just wait a second.”

But he didn't wait. He walked on, up the sidewalk, shuffling, then breaking into a little mini-trot, only to stop and shuffle again, around a corner and into the north side of the Knots.

I thought about running after him. I was pretty sure I could catch up, pin him down, hold him there until . . . what? Until spring?

“Let him go,” Jimmer said from behind me. “Let him cool off. He'll come back around in a bit.”

I shook my head.

“I don't know, man,” I said.

“What's going to happen?” said Jimmer. “He's a big boy. He's got to do it himself. And you don't know, maybe he will. Dude has circumnavigated the globe, right? He probably can handle the Knots.”

I looked off in the direction of where Chick had turned, then back at Jimmer. Four-leaf clovers and green top hats stuck to the window of the Shammy.

I dug my hands into my pockets and shivered.

“What if he can't?” I said.

Jimmer checked his watch.

“Well, if he can't, he can't,” he said. “Uh, listen.”

I looked at him. He had somewhere to be.

Right, of course.

I had somewhere to be too. We were adults. There were limits. I took one last look down the sidewalk, toward the swallowing stones of the polis.

“Let's go,” I said.

We drove back to Gable, the Escalade purring down Route 20 and past the glory of the Knotsford-Gable Road. Jimmer had his tablet out and glanced up only occasionally, fully engaged in whatever was happening with his e-mails or his chats or whatever. It was like the virtual and the real worlds were reversed for him. When we passed the Horse Head, I looked over with what I hoped would feel like disinterest but instead just felt sort of forced. The parking lot was empty and there was no way Chickie could've gotten there already on foot.

Shake it off. Move forward.

At the Head-Connect gates, the security officer waved us through after a semi-cursory inspection, Jimmer barely acknowledging him. The pebbles crunched organically under our wheels, a pleasant, indulgent sound, and the young mystery valets swung our doors open before we'd even stopped moving. Welcome back, they said, smiling perfect, healthy smiles, wearing sweatshirts and light gloves beneath the entry portico's heat lamps. The lobby smelled of pine and wood-smoke, but only mildly so, only enough to suggest a hike, or perhaps a massage, or an instructional lecture about pine and wood-smoke and their significance in Native American aromatherapy. We were a world away from the industrial cleaners of Courtroom 5.

Vishy Shetty, the most beautiful woman in maybe the whole world, rose from a banquette under a chiaroscuro painting of a landscape, or perhaps it was just a window.

“Hello,” she said, her voice flowing like cursive, nodding to me but clearly speaking to Jimmer.

He put his tablet down and smiled at her. Her assistant was nowhere to be seen.

“Ready?” he asked.

She smiled what appeared to be a genuine smile.

He held his arm out for her. She picked up a flowing, white parka, glided across the carpet, and placed her arm in his.

“Back on Wednesday,” Jimmer said to me. “You have your key, right?”

I nodded. Outside, one of the valets pulled up in a black BMW 7 Series. Jimmer escorted Vishy Shetty to the rear passenger-side door, which another of the valets had already opened. Then Jimmer came back to me.

“You're all right, right?”

I thought about it for a second and was pleasantly surprised at the result. I nodded.

“I feel good.”

Jimmer smiled.

“Good!”

He headed around to the far-side passenger door.

“Keep me posted,” he called to me, flashing the finger-and-thumb sign for a phone that no longer existed in his world. I made a pistol hand at him, and he got in.

I watched as he spoke quickly with the valet in the driver's seat, who then pecked at a dashboard navigator. In the back, Jimmer had already leaned over to Vishy Shetty and was holding his magic tablet up in his palms. A small petal protruded from the speaker port. Vishy Shetty looked over at him, and then, as the BMW pulled away, she closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and vanished.

I looked around the entrance, where people hustled without seeming to rush. Valets stacked skis in a rack near the doors. Sweaty guests wiped their sneakers on luxurious honey-colored bristle mats. The oxygen bar. The kombucha tureen. Lunch shifts would be starting in a half-hour. There was always a next thing, a better way. I looked for Ava Winston, but didn't see her. Then I did, coming through an administrative door behind the front desk. She was wearing the same skirt-suit she'd worn in court, looking down at a folder of papers and heading to her guest services desk.

I moved on the diagonal to cut her off, positioning myself so as to present what I hoped would be a knee-buckling contrapposto. My idea, sort of formed but unrefined, was both to thank her and get her to see what a responsible figure I could cut in a suit. Thank her because, while I was sure plenty of public relation considerations had gone into Head-Connect's decision to chill out on the felony counts, I suspected that Ava Winston could have sent someone else. Get her to check me out because, forsaken by Chickie, I felt surprisingly unencumbered. I felt ready to embrace a more forward-thinking mindset, and perhaps embrace Ava Winston in the process.

I stood near the end of the front desk, the point at which she would come around the corner and leave the protection of the mahogany bar, or cedar, or whatever it was, and cut across the open ocean of carpet. I considered a hand-in-the-pocket move, a casual lean, a raised open palm.

Instead, it was Ava who employed the raised open palm, her left hand, flat and empty, shutting me down before I'd even begun to speak. Swear to God for a second I thought she might be high-fiving me, and I was just glad I'd gone with the hand-in-the-pocket thing and couldn't recover in time. She brushed by, never taking in the tight knot of my tie, the cut of my jib. I watched as she moved efficiently across the lobby, engaged a guest just as the guest required engagement, solved a problem, and sat down at her desk, poised and proper. She'd never even looked at me.

Didn't matter. I'd known enough girls over the years that I could tell when one of them was fighting a losing battle. Methinks thou dost protest too much, Ava Winston. There'll be world enough and time for us. Right after my wrap.

Around four o'clock, I tried Jimmer's old phone, the one he'd loaned to Chick. No answer. I left a message and tried Chick's cell, but that just got me a “no longer in service” recording. I rang the Horse Head to see if he'd checked in there, but they said not. I asked if they'd had any new guests register that day, and they got paranoid and hung up.

I was trying real hard not to look back. Chickie had my number, knew I was here. He could get in touch with me whenever he wanted. But he didn't want to, and I should be taking that as some sort of message—to let go, to enjoy my quinoa salad and dandelion–ancient grain crostini, to appreciate the promise of tomorrow's buckwheat cleanse.

I went looking for him at eight.

First to the Heirloom, where Ginny Archey was tending the wounds of the Monday night crowd. Tim-Rick Golack sat at the bar, nursing a grapefruit juice and watching the Celtics lose to the Heat on a screen in the corner. Some of the corporate crowd from Head-Connect were clustered around a booth at the back, heads together, apparently bidding adieu to their boondoggle with a couple of pitchers of Sam Adams. They shrunk when they saw me, as if I was an emissary from the spa or, worse, from their own HR department, checking up on the value-add. I gave them the eyes-on-you sign.

“Seen him?” I asked Ginny.

She shook her head no, looked over at Tim-Rick.

“He's probably with my brother,” he said.

“I hope not,” I said, looking at Tim-Rick meaningfully, and added, “for both their sakes.”

Tim-Rick met my look, not confrontationally but knowingly.

“Me too,” he said, and he sounded sincere.

“You know how I can get hold of your brother?” I asked.

Tim-Rick shrugged.

“No,” he said, and turned back to his grapefruit juice.

I left and drove up to the Horse Head. The parking lot was empty. The rooms, all twenty of them, were dark. I parked and sat in the Escalade for a second. I tried the numbers I had for Chick again, then went over to the front desk.

Bowhunter was in the back, came out grudgingly when I rang the desk bell.

“You get anyone checking in here tonight? A young guy, my age, blond, with a beard? Last name Benecik?”