He’d been able to wrangle the time away because the rotary blast drill used for boring test holes had been so damaged by the brutal cold that Ingersoll-Rand was sending a team of mechanics to repair it. The hard reality of working in the Arctic was that while men could be insulated from the weather, steel became as brittle as glass. They’d been lucky no one had been injured when a main bearing detonated like a grenade.
It wasn’t unusual for Mercer to be away from home for months at a time, trotting around the globe prospecting, assaying, and troubleshooting for different mining companies. His expertise in geology had made him wealthy, although the price was very little time to enjoy it. So when he could string together enough consecutive days for a vacation, he liked to maximize every moment. Still, he procrastinated for another half hour under a feather duvet before swinging his legs out of bed.
The tan he enjoyed from a scuba-diving weekend in the Bahamas had long since faded. His lean body was as pale as a marble statue, the result of the Arctic’s twenty-two-hour nights and the exhaustion of continuous fifteen-hour work shifts. The only color came from his hands and forearms, which were darkened by ingrained dirt that wouldn’t wash out, and a dense bruise on his shoulder where a twenty-foot length of drill string had caught him.
Mercer’s home was a three-story brick rowhouse in one of the few sections of Arlington not yet turned into high-rise office buildings. He’d bought the building years ago and converted the six apartments it once contained into one home; it was difficult to see the extent of the remodeling from the outside because he’d left the original façade untouched. His bedroom was located on the third floor and overlooked an atrium that took up the front third of the house. On the second floor were two guest bedrooms, the family room, which was actually a bar modeled after an English gentlemen’s club, and an open space he used as a library. On the ground floor was a little-used kitchen, the dining room, where he kept a billiard table, and his home office. A spiral staircase restored by an architectural salvage firm in Connecticut connected the three levels.
The town house’s eclectic style and decoration reflected its owner, and because of his travel schedule Mercer had made certain it had become the anchor his life needed. He considered it one of his only real indulgences.
He’d arrived home from Canada at four in the morning and had been asleep for ten straight hours. Afternoon light spilled through the skylight above his bed and drifted over the balcony at the edge of the mezzanine. Mercer threw on a clean pair of jeans and an old Colorado School of Mines sweatshirt. His luggage lay stacked at the foot of his bed.
He’d remembered to set the automatic coffeemaker behind the bar before collapsing but had planned on waking at noon. The two-hour-old brew was as thick as tar. Perfect.
Since he rarely used the kitchen, he kept some groceries in the cabinets under the back bar and set about making a bowl of cereal. He didn’t think about the expiration date on the milk until the first cottage-cheese-thick curd landed in the bowl. Gagging at the smell, he poured the mess down the bar sink and cursed his house sitter. The orange juice in the rebuilt lock-lever refrigerator he stocked with beer and mixers was just as old.
Harry White, Mercer’s eighty-year-old best friend and the man who Mercer was convinced put the crotch in crotchety, knew he’d be home today and was supposed to have done the shopping. Harry tended to treat Mercer’s town house as his own, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He had the domestic skills of a rabid wolverine. In the trash can were a dozen empty Jack Daniel’s bottles and about ten cartons’ worth of cigarette butts.
Mercer had been gone six weeks and felt it could have been worse. At least Harry had gotten his mail and had taken his phone calls. There was only one message on the answering machine. He hit the PLAY button. “Dr. Mercer, this is Cindy from Dr. Cryan’s office.” Mercer’s dentist. “I’m just calling to remind you of your cleaning appointment Wednesday at ten.”
He ran his tongue around his mouth and decided his teeth weren’t in immediate danger of falling out. He’d reschedule for when he got back from Canada next month.
Sipping his coffee and thumbing through the stacks of mail, Mercer was grateful that Harry hadn’t repeated last year’s trick of putting him on a handful of pornographic mailing lists. He hadn’t been able to look his mailman in the eye until that mess had been straightened out. Delving deeper into his pile, he realized Harry’s distorted sense of humor had been in full swing after all.
Not only had he brought over junk mail from a half dozen of his cronies, he’d meticulously shuffled Mercer’s important stuff in with wads of credit-card solicitations and other garbage. The trade magazines were hidden inside catalogues for companies Mercer had never heard of. It would take an hour just to separate out his own stuff.
The phone rang. “Hello.”
“Hey, Mercer. You’re finally out of bed.” Harry’s voice, the result of sixty years of chain-smoking and hard drinking, grated like a diesel engine on a cold morning.
“Yeah, I didn’t get home until four. Wait, how’d you know I was asleep? Where the hell are you?”
“I came by a couple hours ago when you were sacked out,” Harry breezed, a lungful of smoke hissing past his lips. “I came back a little after noon. I’m downstairs in your office on line two.”
Mercer checked his phone and saw the light for the fax line was on. “I should call the cops and have you arrested as a Peeping Tom. Why didn’t you get milk, you bastard? You knew I was coming home today.”
“I did buy milk,” Harry protested. “To save time I got it two weeks ago and brought it over yesterday. It’s right in your fridge with the OJ you wanted.”
“And it was lumpier than my cereal.”
“Gripe, gripe, gripe.” Harry pitched his voice as high as he could. It still rumbled like a longshoreman’s. “This milk is too sour. This milk is too lumpy. Jesus, you’re worse than Goldilocks. Hold on. I’m coming up. I need a drink if I have to listen to you bitch about every little thing.”
Mercer was smiling as he set the cordless on the bar. In the ten years since they’d met, he couldn’t recall a single nice word between them. Nor could he recall a denied favor either. Harry was the other anchor in Mercer’s nomadic life, an unlikely friend who meant more to him than anyone he’d ever known. That one was more than twice the age of the other had never had a bearing on their relationship. Both had recognized early on that their personalities ran parallel and seamlessly transcended the generations. Mercer was very much the man Harry had been forty years ago and Mercer supposed, and occasionally dreaded, that in a few decades he’d be like Harry White.
In the moments it took Harry to climb the antique staircase that coiled up to the library adjoining the bar, Mercer had a Jack Daniel’s and ginger ale waiting.
The two men were the same height and roughly the same build, although gravity was shifting the breadth of Harry’s shoulders into a potbelly. Where Mercer’s eyes were sharp gray, Harry’s were a sarcastic blue. His face was as lined as a topographic map and his silver hair remained as stiff and full as a shoeshine brush.
Harry sported his traditional uniform of baggy pants, an overlaundered white oxford that showed the outline of the T-shirt underneath, and sneakers. A mid-March chill forced him into a light windbreaker.
“Welcome home,” Harry greeted, taking a seat at the bar in front of his drink. He hooked the sword cane Mercer had given him for his last birthday on the brass handrail. Although he’d lost a leg decades ago, the walking stick was still more of an ornament than a necessity. “Jesus, you look like the main course at a vampire convention. When was the last time you saw some sun?”