Cutlery clanked against beer mugs.
“It’s been an insane couple of weeks, starting with my wig-out at the ball game—”
“We had that game won, bro,” said Skitch.
“Yeah, maybe, though it wasn’t exactly Willie Mays in the on-deck circle. But from the ball game through the violence of last night, I have to say, the whole experience for me wasn’t altogether horrible. You might have heard I lost my dad when I was twelve—”
“No, we hadn’t,” said Bubba Jr. “You ever hear that, Kat?”
“Not in, like”—she checked her watch—“the last ten minutes or so.”
“And my mom died last year,” continued Kyle, ignoring the sarcasm, “and I’ve been feeling sorry for myself, abandoned and alone, the poor little orphan boy.”
“You’re making me cry,” said Tommy. “Stop it. No, really, stop it.”
“But in the middle of the insanity,” said Kyle, “each of you guys came through for me when I needed it. Junior letting me use his bar for the meeting even after giving me the heave-ho, which I fully deserved. Kat getting me out of jail, staying in touch with the police, and keeping me grounded. My Uncle Max, who’s like family to me—”
“I am family to you, you putz.”
“For giving me his sage advice and his unflinching honesty.”
“Does that mean we’re good again?”
“No,” said Kyle.
“You let me know.”
“I also need to thank Lucia, who saved my life not once but twice from a homicidal maniac. And finally Skitch, who stood with me during the entire time and helped out in ways we won’t talk about with a cop present.”
“He’s just talking hypothetically,” said Skitch to Ramirez. “What I would have done if it wasn’t, you know, against the law.”
“You all helped, each of you, except for Tommy, actually, who didn’t do a thing except call a United States senator a pussy to his face.”
“I was right about him, wasn’t I?” said Tommy.
“Yes you were,” said Kyle. “So I just wanted to thank you. We all want to know we’re not alone in the world, and right now I feel less alone than I’ve ever felt in my entire life. Which is good, since after Kat kicks me out, I’m going to need a place to stay. So here’s to all of you, even to Old Tommy Trapp. Thanks for taking up the slack in my life.”
They were clinking glasses, and Ramirez was ready to take her cue to up and leave, when she saw it, above the neon hanging in the window, a quick bob of gray hair passing to the left. And even as she saw it, she noticed that Kyle saw it, too, and reacted to it like a slap in the face. He stared for a moment, dropping his jaw like a ventriloquist’s dummy, and then he was on his feet and heading out of the bar without so much as a word to anyone else at the table.
“What the hell?” said Ramirez, as she stood to go after him.
“Leave him be,” said the pretty lawyer, smiling kindly at her as she put her hand on Ramirez’s arm. “Welcome to Kyle World.”
Ramirez sat down again, and Skitch leaned over to her. “Just a peek?”
“Forget about it.”
“There any other hotties like you on the force?”
“You mean,” she said, “hotties who’d be interested in someone like you?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
KYLE KNEW IT wasn’t his father. It didn’t even look right, and after his morning watching the new day dawn he would have been ready to bet that the sight wouldn’t affect him like it had in the past. But then the emotion rose in him, pure and full of its lovely pain, and he was up, and out of his chair, and out of the bar. He couldn’t help himself. He would never be able to help himself. Despite everything he had learned, he’d never be totally free of him, because it was his father, and as someone told him long ago, that’s just the way of it with sons and their fathers.
He looked left, nothing. He looked right, nothing. He ran to the other side of the street, climbed onto the roof of a car, scanned as far as he was able, and from there he saw it, the head of gray hair bobbing atop a bent figure that had just turned the corner.
He jumped down, chased the man around the corner, saw him, gained on him, grabbed his shoulder as he called out, “Dad?”
The man spun around, old, decrepit, his pocked face marked with fear. The man raised his gnarled hands to ward off Kyle’s attack.
“I’m sorry,” said Kyle, backing away. “I didn’t mean. . . . I’m sorry.”
He felt deflated as he walked back to the bar, when he saw it, resting against the wall of Bubba’s, right by the door. An envelope. He stared at it for a moment before picking it up. No address, no postage, just his name scrawled across its surface. Kyle Byrne. With shaking hands he opened it, reached inside, pulled out a piece of paper wrapped around something flat and rectangular, bound with a rubber band.
A few moments later, he opened the door, leaned into the bar, and motioned for Ramirez to come out. She glanced around, puzzled, as if he were surely looking for someone else, but then grabbed her pocketbook.
“What happened?” said Ramirez, outside now. “Your jaw dropped as if you saw a ghost.”
Kyle laughed. “I have something I need to give you.”
“Flowers?”
“Better,” he said as he handed her the tape that he had found in the envelope.
Ramirez stared at it for a moment before glancing up at Kyle, who beamed at her, like a hunting dog who had just retrieved a dead quail. She gave him a questioning look, he nodded. She took a tissue from her bag, wrapped the cassette carefully.
“Where’d you get it?” she said.
“I found it right there on the street.”
“Just sitting there, outside, just like that.”
“Strangest thing,” said Kyle.
But he didn’t tell her who the tape was from, he didn’t tell her that there was no reason to dust the cassette for fingerprints because he had wiped them off on his T-shirt, he didn’t tell her anything. He just stood there for a moment, smiling and letting the emotions that blossomed from the envelope, all good and all surprising, rise through him.
“My father once told me,” he said finally, “that life was about seizing glory. I didn’t know what he meant then, but I think I know now.”
“And what’s that?” said Ramirez.
Without any preamble or his usual grab bag of feints or tricks, he leaned forward and kissed her.
HE LEANED FORWARD and kissed her, and she kissed back, closing her eyes and letting her body fall into his, and they each felt something happen that was both startling and new.