I have your present, Chad says. Would you like it now or later?
I keep moving forward. In the living room, I collapse onto the sofa and Chad takes the same chair he took three days ago. Already we seem to have fallen into a routine.
Chad lowers the attaché case beside him on the floor. He is dressed in the colours of flame, the crisp blue denim of four days ago and today an orange polo. Chad’s boots imply a certain rough and tumble. Old and nicely scuffed as if an artist has burnished them just so.
And Chad’s whole life in England begins to form before me. A home in Belgravia, Chelsea lunchtimes and horse riding in Hyde Park at the weekend. Weekdays in Zurich, Frankfurt, Brussels.
I look hard at Chad, feeling like a child. Chad has grown and I have stayed still. No, I have stagnated, I have regressed. How did you find me, Chad? I say.
Come on, Jolyon, Chad says, it wasn’t exactly hard. You worked on a major newspaper.
My pieces appeared under a different name, I say.
I know, Chad says, you used your wife’s surname. He looks at his watch and then he says, I guess we have the whole afternoon, right? No need to hurry. So don’t you want to hear about my adventures as a tourist in New York these past few days? You know, I grew up only a hundred and fifty miles north of here and yet until this trip I’d been here only once. And that was years ago when I was just a kid.
I remember, I say, sounding bored.
Fine, then we can talk fondly of old times if you’d prefer, Chad says.
I grimace, the sarcastic imitation of a smile.
Chad waits as I let the silence lengthen. And then at last he shrugs and speaks. If you don’t want to play small talk, Jolyon, then there was another game I had in mind. He picks up his case, rests it on his lap and snaps open its latches. These are your birthday presents, he says as he starts to unpack its contents. Cards, dice and a blue cup. Chad even has a small square of green felt. He lays everything out on the coffee table, the green felt cut perfectly to size, and looks up at me. I took the liberty, he says. Or did you have your own paraphernalia you were planning to use?
No, I say, I clean forgot to contact my paraphernalia maker.
Chad laughs. Do you want to start now or would you like to chew the fat a little more?
Just deal the cards, I say.
LXXIII(iii) Chad wins. It is not even close. He wins and wins and wins. What are the words they use in sports reports? Carnage. Slaughter. Whitewash.
Although technically it is not quite a whitewash. But I lose spectacularly. I struggle to keep track of the cards that have already been played. I struggle to remember whatever strategy I once knew. At some points in the Game I even struggle to keep my eyes from closing. My head hurts. I am drunk, I am clouded by pills. The consequences of losing make me feel sick and weak. Chad intimidates me. I can’t stop thinking about Dee.
And the dice fall unkindly. Everything is against me, everything except for the cards dealt during one solitary round. One round in which fate tosses me a bone, a hand so pleasing that it is hard not to win something. A crowded court of nobles, a diamond mine, a superabundance of spades . . . But I play this hand terribly, I play it like a Vegas lush. And then the dice fall kindly for Chad.
When this round of the Game is complete, I owe Chad three of the most serious consequences and two from the second pot. (I use the word pot symbolically as we have agreed to negotiate the consequences once the play is complete.) Chad, having fought off the onslaught of my single miraculous hand, owes only a single consequence. Yes, one minor scratch, a debt owed to the least serious pot.
LXXIII(iv) Why don’t you go first? Chad says. Hit me, Jolyon, what will it be? He leans back smug in his chair, pulls out a piece of paper from his back pocket. I took the liberty of preparing a list of tasks for you already, he says, waving the folded page. You know, just in case I got lucky.
I hold my head in my hands. I don’t know, I say.
Come on, Chad says, there must be something you want to do to me. Some minor embarrassment you’ve longed to see me suffer. You’ve had fourteen years, Jolyon.
Give me a minute, I say.
Sure, take as much time as you like.
LXXIII(v) I pace unsteadily up and down the length of the apartment. I pause before each turn hoping that something will have landed in my head, something simple yet devastating.
But I can only think about Dee. More blood on my hands. And nothing arrives.
The more I pace the harder it becomes, my head elsewhere and the room wheeling around me.
I stop in the kitchen. Maybe some of this light-headedness is not only because of whisky and pills. I start to wonder how long it is since I’ve eaten. How could I have forgotten to eat? I can’t remember the last time I put anything in my mouth.
The fridge is empty and the cupboards are bare except for a few tea bags. Empty tins of chilli litter my kitchen counters, a jar of peanut butter that looks as if it has been licked clean by a greedy dog. I find a box of sugar on the floor and even that is empty.
There must be some food in here somewhere. I get down on my knees and crawl around, sifting through the mess, the dirty clothes, old newspapers, utility bills, empty whisky bottles, cutlery, crockery, a small mirror, so many green bottles, crushed eggshells, a Chewbacca mask, delivery menus . . .
And then I find something. Not much. But something.
I tip the bag and a few stale crumbs fall into my mouth. Brittle crunch. And then something softer, the sweet melt of a milk-chocolate chip.
I look at the wax paper bag, wet my forefinger, dab at the crumbs. I can hear Chad whistling Auld Lang Syne in my living room. I start to smile.
LXXIV
LXXIV(i) The kitchen table is bare. Old and scratched. She is throwing a tablecloth over it when I enter. The cloth is scorched in places. She wears a green pinafore over a white T-shirt. First she smooths the tablecloth, then the front of her pinafore.
This gentleman is from England, the farmer says. He takes the Ford cap from his head and hangs it on a coat hook by the door. You know, that country with all the famous queens, he adds.
The farmer’s wife is flustered, she flaps toward her husband, turns him around. Why don’t you go put on some bacon and eggs? she says.
Because I’ve eaten, the farmer says.
For our guest, his wife says, laughing nervously. Please, take a seat, she says to me. Has it been a long trip? From England?
Oh, I came up from New York City, I say.
Really? she says. She smiles but looks confused, as if she has many questions but is not sure which to ask first.
So I try to explain while the farmer studies me carefully. I was a friend of your son at Pitt College, I say. But I moved here to the States some time ago. I live down in the city. Anyway, unfortunately I lost contact with your son for a long time. But we recently found each other, he’s paying me a visit when he flies over in a few days’ time.
How nice, Chad’s mom says. She looks grateful for the explanation but still confused. When he flies over. In a few days. When he flies over from . . .? she asks, struggling hard to make it sound as if this is a normal enquiry for a mother to make of her son.
Oh, I say, right. Yes, Chad lives in England, I say.
Good, she says, good, then he went back there. Chad’s mom pats at her chest. He clearly did love it so, she says.
The farmer is lowering a huge cast-iron skillet from a hook high above a kitchen counter. He is a large man, maybe once even larger, he looks almost seventy now. In the past I imagine he would have swung the heavy skillet over to the range with one hand but now he looks bitter as the skillet’s weight takes him by surprise and he has to use two. The information that his son lives in England doesn’t seem to affect the farmer, perhaps his ears are no longer so good. He opens the fridge door.