‘Maybe it’s the change of scene.’
‘Maybe.’
He doesn’t think there actually is a roadblock. He hasn’t written anything beyond that first episode, but the rest is right there. Waiting. He wants to get to it. It means something to him. It’s not like journaling, it’s not an effort to make peace with a life that has in many ways been unhappy and traumatic, it’s not confessional even though it may amount to a confession. It’s about power. He’s finally tapped into power that doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. Like the view from his new apartment’s ground-level windows, he likes it.
‘In any case,’ he says as they reach the entrance to the parking garage, ‘I plan to buckle down. Starting tomorrow.’
She raises her eyebrows. ‘Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow—’
He chimes in and they finish together. ‘But never jam today!’
‘In any case, I can’t wait to read it.’ They start up the ramp. It’s deliciously cool after the hammerstroke sun on the street. She stops halfway to the first turn. ‘This is me.’ She beeps her keyfob. The taillights of a little blue Prius respond. Two bumper stickers flank her license plate: OUR BODIES, OUR CHOICES and BELIEVE THE WOMEN.
‘You’re apt to get keyed with those,’ Billy says. ‘This is a deep red state.’
She lifts her purse in front of her and gives a smile unlike the one she greeted him with. This is more of a Dirty Harry smile. ‘It’s also a concealed carry state, so if anyone tries to key off my bumper stickers, they better do it while I’m not around.’
Is that more show than go? The little accountant lady putting on a badass front for a man she might be interested in? Maybe, maybe not. Either way, he admires her for being out front about what she believes. For being brave. This is how a good person acts. At least it is when they’re being their best selves.
‘Well, I’ll see you around the campus,’ Billy says. ‘I’m up a few levels.’
‘Couldn’t find anything closer? Really?’
He could say it’s because he came in late today, but that might come back to bite him, because he always parks on Four. He hoists a thumb. ‘Less chance of a bump-and-run up there.’
‘Or getting your bumper stickers keyed off?’
‘I don’t have any,’ Billy says, and adds the absolute truth: ‘I like to fly under the radar.’ Then, on impulse (and he is rarely an impulsive man), he says what he’s promised himself he would not. ‘Come for a drink with me sometime. Want to?’
‘Yes.’ With no hesitation, as if she’s just been waiting for him to pop the question. ‘What about Friday? There’s a nice place two blocks over. We can go dutch. I always go dutch when I have a drink with a man.’ She pauses. ‘At least the first time.’
‘Probably a good policy. Drive safe, Phyllis.’
‘Phil. Call me Phil.’
He gives her taillights a wave before walking the rest of the way up to the fourth level. There’s an elevator, but he wants the walk. He wants to ask himself why the fuck he did what he just did. Or what about playing Monopoly with Derek and Shanice Ackerman, especially when he knows they’ll want a return engagement the coming weekend, and he’ll probably oblige? What happened to getting friendly, but not too close? Can you be part of the scenery when you’re in the foreground?
The short answer is no.
CHAPTER 6
1
Summer rolls along. Hot and humid days of blaring sunshine are punctuated by sudden thunderstorms, some of them vicious with throats full of hail. A couple of tornados strike, but on the outskirts, none downtown or in Midwood. When the storms blow out, they leave streets that steam and dry quickly. Most of the apartments on the upper floors of the Gerard Tower are empty, either unoccupied or deserted by their residents for cooler climes. Most of the businesses remain fully staffed, because most of them are young firms still struggling to find their footing. Some, like the law firm down the hall from Billy’s office, are start-ups that didn’t even exist two years ago.
Billy and Phil Stanhope go for that drink, in a pleasant wood-paneled bar adjacent to what Billy guesses is one of the Bluff’s better restaurants, where steaks are the specialty of the house. She has a whiskey and soda (‘My dad’s tipple,’ she says). Billy has an Arnold Palmer, explaining he’s off alcohol, even beer, while working on his book.
‘I don’t know if I’m actually an alcoholic, the jury’s out on that,’ he says, ‘but I’ve had trouble with the booze.’ He gives her the backstory he’s been given by Nick and Giorgio: too much drinking back home in New Hampshire with too many party animal friends.
They spend a pleasant enough half-hour, but he senses her interest in him – as anything more than a friend, that is – is not as strong as he maybe had hoped it would be. He thinks it’s the gulf between what’s in their glasses. Drinking whiskey with a man who’s drinking an iced tea–lemonade mix is like drinking alone, and maybe (the quick color that dashes into her cheeks as she takes down what’s in hers suggests it might be so) Phil has a booze problem herself. Or will, in the coming years. It’s too bad things are as they are because he wouldn’t mind taking her to bed, but keeping it friendly does lessen the chance of complications. He won’t fade entirely into the background with her – there is that liking, on both their parts – but no forensic unit will ever find his fingerprints in her bedroom. That’s good. For both of them. Yet even getting this close, exchanging life summaries (hers real, his bogus) is too close, and he knows it.
Dalton Smith has a backstory that doesn’t include problems with booze, so he can have a beer on the back stoop of 658 Pearson with Beverly’s husband. Don Jensen works for a landscaping company called Growing Concern. He’s totally down with that other Don, the one who sits in much grander digs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He especially agrees with the other Don when it comes to the issue of immigration (‘Don’t want to see America painted brown,’ he says), even though a large part of Growing Concern’s workforce consists of undocumented aliens who don’t speak English (‘Although they do speak food stamps,’ he says). When Billy points out the contradiction, Don Jensen waves it away (‘Movie stars come and go, but wetbacks are forever,’ he says). He asks Billy where he’s off to next and Billy says a couple of weeks in Iowa City. Then on to Des Moines and Ames.
‘You sure don’t spend much time here,’ Don says. ‘Seems like a waste of rent money.’
‘Summer’s always my busy time. And I need a place to hang my hat. You may see more of me this fall.’
‘I’ll drink to that. Want another beer?’
‘No thanks,’ Billy says, getting up, ‘I’ve got some work to do.’
‘Nerd,’ Don says, and gives him an affectionate clap on the back.
‘Guilty as charged,’ Billy says.
On Evergreen Street, the Raglands – Paul and Denise – invite him over for barbecued chicken from Big Clucks. For dessert, Denise serves strawberry shortcake made in her own kitchen. It’s delicious. Billy has seconds. The Fazios – Pete and Diane – invite him over for Friday pizza, which they eat in the downstairs rumpus room, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark along with Danny Fazio and the Ackerman kids from across the street. The movie works as well for them as it did for Billy and Cathy when they went to see it at a third-run showing at the old Bijou. Jamal and Corinne Ackerman have him over for tacos and chocolate silk pie. It’s delicious. Billy has seconds. He’s put on five pounds. Not wanting to look like the neighborhood freeloader, he buys a grill at Walmart, using one of his David Lockridge credit cards, and invites all three families, plus Jane Kellogg, the widow who lives at the far end of the block, over for burgers and hotdogs in his backyard. Which, like the front one, is enjoying a nice revival under his supervision.