‘Cagey,’ Billy says.
‘That’s right, cagey. Still, Annette was what you call a savin soul, and Bev’s her only kid.’
‘Ah.’
‘We’re apt to be there awhile is why I’m callin. Bev wanted to know if it’d be okay for me to put a key to our place under your door. When you get back from Bama, it’d be a favor if you’d check our fridge and water Bev’s spider plant and her Busy Lizzie. Crazy about those things, even gives em names, do you believe it? If you’re gonna be gone longer than a week, that’s a head-scratcher. We don’t know many people around here.’
Because there aren’t many people around there, Billy thinks. He also thinks this is good. Better than good, a fantastic stroke of luck. He’ll have the Pearson Street house entirely to himself, unless the Jensens come back before Joel Allen leaves California.
‘If you can’t do it …’
‘I can and I’ll be happy to. How long do you think you’ll be gone?’
‘No way of telling. At least a week, maybe two. I got a leave of absence from work. Without pay, accourse, but if there’s money in it …’
‘Right. I get it.’ Better and better. ‘And no problem on the plants. I expect to be back soon, and for quite awhile this time.’
‘That’s great. Bev told me to tell you that you can have anything out of the fridge you want. Better it gets used up than have it spoil, she says. Course, the milk may be gone, anyway.’
‘Yes,’ Billy says. ‘I ran into that problem myself. You have a safe trip.’
‘Thanks, Dalton.’
‘You bet,’ Billy says.
2
That night Billy lies in bed with his hands under the pillow, looking up at the misty oblong of yellowish light on the ceiling, thrown by the streetlight in front of the Fazios’. He keeps forgetting to get curtains. He thinks about doing it and then it slips his mind. Maybe now, with nothing to do but wait, he’ll remember.
He hopes the waiting period will be short, not just because Don and Beverly being gone is so convenient but because the hours spent in Gerard Tower are going to hang heavy without Benjy’s story to work on. Fallujah comes next, and Billy knows some of what he wants to say, some of the brilliant details he wants to capture. Those shredded garbage bags caught in the palm trees, blowing in the hot wind like flags. How the muj showed up in taxis to battle the Marines, piling out of them like clowns out of the little car at the circus. Only the circus clowns don’t pile out guns up. How boys in 50 Cent and Snoop Dogg T-shirts served as ammo runners, darting through the rubble in their battered Nikes or Chuck Taylors. How a three-legged dog with half a human hand in its mouth went trotting through Jolan Park. Billy can see the white dust on that dog’s paws so clearly.
The pieces are there, but no way he can put them together until this job is done. According to William Wordsworth, the best writing is about strong emotion recalled in tranquility. Billy has lost his tranquility.
Finally he slips into sleep, but the soft ding-dong of an arriving text awakens him at some dark hour. Ordinarily he might have slept through it, but now all his sleep is thin, with dreams that are mere wisps. It was always that way in the suck.
Three phones are lined up and charging on his nightstand: Billy’s, Dave’s, and Dalton’s. It’s the screen of his own that’s lit up.
Db1Dom: Call me. There follows a number with a Las Vegas area code. Db1Dom is the Double Domino, Nick’s casino hotel. In Billy’s time-zone it’s three o’clock. In Vegas, Nick is probably just preparing to turn in.
Billy calls. Nick answers and asks how Billy’s doing. Billy says he’s doing fine except for it being three o’clock in the morning.
Nick laughs cheerfully. ‘Best time to call, folks are always home. I just got word that our friend will probably be coming your way next Wednesday. It would have been Monday, but he’s got a little case of food poisoning, probably self-administered. His ride will take him to his hotel, where he’ll spend the night. You follow?’
Billy follows. Allen’s hotel will be the county jail.
‘The next morning he’ll be over your way for the A. You know what I mean?’
‘Yes.’ The arraignment.
‘Did our redhaired friend get you what you wanted?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Your agent will send you one more text, then you’re on standby. After, you leave on your vacation. Got all that?’
‘Yes,’ Billy says.
‘You’ll want to pay the bill on this phone and any other you’ve been using. Follow me?’
‘Yes,’ Billy says. The way Nick keeps asking him if he’s getting it is tiresome, but also good. Nick still thinks he’s talking to a fellow whose brains are permanently on the dimmer switch. Destroy the Billy Summers phone, destroy the David Lockridge phone, destroy any burner phones he may have picked up along the way, roger that. The phone he’ll keep is the one Nick doesn’t know about.
‘We’ll talk down the line,’ Nick says. ‘Keep your phone for awhile if you want, but trash the text I sent you.’ And he’s gone.
Billy deletes the text, lies down, and is asleep in less than a minute.
3
It’s a cool weekend. Fall, it seems, is finally arriving. Billy can see the first few dashes of color in the trees on Evergreen Street. There’s Monopoly on Sunday afternoon, Billy playing against three kids with half a dozen more kibitzing around the board. The dice are usually his friend but not today. He rolls three doubles and winds up in jail on three consecutive turns, a statistical freak almost up there with picking all six Mega Millions numbers. He hangs in long enough for two of his opponents to go broke and then loses to Derek Ackerman. When the bank has taken his last mortgaged property, the kids all crow and pig-pile him, chanting loser-loser-vodka-boozer. Corrie comes downstairs to see what all the ruckus is about and yells through her laughter to get off him, let the man breathe.
‘You got smoked!’ Danny Fazio shouts gleefully. ‘You got smoked by a kid!’
‘I did,’ Billy says, laughing himself. ‘If I’d gotten all of the railroads instead of going to jail—’
Shan’s friend Becky blows a raspberry at him and they all laugh some more. Then they go upstairs and eat pie in the living room, where Jamal is watching a baseball playoff game. Shan sits next to Billy on the couch, holding her flamingo in her lap. In the seventh inning, she goes to sleep with her head resting on Billy’s arm. Corrie asks him to stay for supper, but Billy declines, saying he might catch an early movie. He’s been hankering to see Deadly Express.
‘I saw the previews for that one,’ Derek says. ‘It looks scary.’
‘I eat lots of popcorn,’ Billy says. ‘It keeps me from being scared.’
Billy doesn’t go to the movie but listens to a podcast review of it as he drives across town to the parking garage where his Ford Fusion awaits. Always safe, never sorry. He drives the Fusion to 658 Pearson Street and stows his Dalton Smith gear in the closet. Then he goes upstairs and waters Bev Jensen’s spider plant and Busy Lizzie. The spider plant is going great guns, but the Busy Lizzie looks pretty wilted.
‘There you go, Daphne,’ Billy says. The little sign in front of the Busy Lizzie so identifies her. The spider plant is named – who knows why – Walter.
Billy locks up and leaves the house, wearing a gimme cap to cover his non-blond hair. Also sunglasses, although it’s now almost dark. He returns the Fusion, drives his Toyota back to Midwood, watches some TV, goes to bed. He falls asleep almost immediately.
4