“I don’t care,” said Doug.
“Dude, if you’re gonna be a bitch, seriously, why don’t you go wait in the truck?”
They froze and ducked as they heard the noise of an approaching car. Mitch put the opera glasses up to his face, but they had fogged over. He polished them with his wrist as a car came into the parking lot and pulled up beside the little valet hut. It was a BMW. Mitch looked at it through the glasses and said, “BMW.”
“Dude,” Doug said, shivering. “I can see that from here.” They watched as the valet parked it about three spaces from the door. Somebody was apparently paying a valet to walk eight feet. Even if it had been a Ferrari, it was parked so close to the valet booth that the valet would notice anyone who approached it, and he would be sure to notice two half-frozen, wet creatures with their feet caked in mud emerge from the woods and get into it.
“Dude, this ain’t gonna work,” said Doug.
Mitch was surveying the situation like an embattled paratroop commander, his breath frosting in the air as he swung the opera glasses back and forth across the parking lot. Doug asked idly what the fuck he was looking at. He had to admit, Doug had a point. “It’s not gonna work unless the parking lot is full,” he said.
“These business suits were a bad idea,” Doug said.
Yes, Mitch had to admit, they were. The deception of wearing business suits was all well and good but after you had been crouching in a wintry, outdoor environment for several hours, a business suit just made you look more conspicuous. All soiled and muddy and coming out of the woods in suits, they would look more like survivors of a plane crash than jaunty guests heading into the Eden Inn. And besides, they were freezing.
They knocked on the window of the pickup. The truck was idling and Kevin was sitting in the warm cab reading the paper, a steaming thermos of cocoa in his hand.
“You comfortable enough?” asked Mitch as Kevin rolled the window down. “Need, like, a foot rub or something?”
“What’s up, jerkoff?”
“We’re scrapping the plan,” said Mitch. “This business suit bullshit is ridiculous. If I’m waiting in a bush all night, I need to be dressed for the weather.”
“Y-Y-Yeah,” shivered Doug.
“We’re going for speed not deception,” said Mitch, his paratroop commander persona returning. “There’re two ways we can do this. One, deception, where we get in the door by looking like we belong there, or two, speed. Just spring out of the forest and take the goddamned Ferrari while the valets are busy. What’re they gonna do? Leap in front of it to save the car? Then we speed off.”
“We decided this,” said Doug.
“Besides, look at him,” said Mitch, pointing at Doug, who was shivering and wet, his soaked long hair clinging to his cheeks. “He looks even creepier than usual.”
Kevin looked at Doug. “All right,” he said with a nod. Doug’s appearance was enough to win the argument. These two were never going to pass for business people, or even people who had any business in the parking lot of the Eden Inn. He leaned over and opened the passenger door and they got in.
“We’re going commando,” said Mitch. “Comfortable, warm clothes we can move fast in.”
“Doesn’t that mean you’re not wearing underwear?” asked Doug.
“What?”
“Going commando.”
“No, it means quick and well prepared. And dressed for the damned weather.”
“I think it means no underwear,” said Kevin.
“Bullshit. I never heard that.”
“I’m going to wear underwear,” said Doug.
Kevin pulled out onto the road for the long drive back to Wilton, the snow starting to fall silently on the tree-lined roads, his two friends bickering in the seat beside him, and thought: This is so much better than a PTA meeting.
CHAPTER 7
DOUG WAS FLIPPING through the classifieds and found himself drawn to a particular ad promising wealth for the writing of children’s books. According to the ad, there was a virtually bottomless market for children’s books and no real skills were required to write one. Doug allowed himself a moment of reverie as he imagined being an admired children’s book author and realized it was a fantasy he had had before.
Two years earlier, while working at the restaurant, Doug had found himself staring at the lobsters in the tank and imagining writing the story of one that escaped. He had wanted the story to be happy and have the lobster make it home to Maine, where he would be reunited with his family. Standing over the hot grill, sweat dripping into his eyes, he had been suddenly thrilled at the idea of being a writer of children’s books and the next day he had sat down to write one.
At first, everything went well. The stage was set, the lobster escaped, and he went off on his happy way to Maine. Annalisa had said she loved it and waited eagerly for the next installment. But as the story developed, the lobster began to change perceptibly, from a happy escapee to a morose and violent drifter. At his best the lobster was aimless; at his worst he was hell-bent on revenge. Despite Annalisa’s admonishments to keep the story light, Doug continually had the lobster running into trouble. By the time the lobster had been arrested for selling nitrous hits at a Phish show and had stabbed a lizard at a truck stop following an argument about leftover fast food, Annalisa had finally persuaded him to give up the story for good.
“You’re weird,” she had said, but her voice had lacked the saucy delight that had been present when she had made the same observation at the beginning of their relationship. It had been the final weeks and now Doug wondered, as he sat and read the classifieds, if he hadn’t thought of the lobster story as a device to keep her attracted to him, an attraction he knew was waning. He stared blankly at the ads, not reading them, wondering what Annalisa was doing now. Right now at that very moment. Waiting tables at some other corporate restaurant, telling all her tables about moving to France, and getting an advanced degree in poetry writing probably. And maybe banging one of the cooks. She liked cooks. Banging other waiters was just so jejune. Or passé. Or coup d’etat. Or something. He was shredding the edges of the newspaper with his fingers.
On the kitchen table was his final paycheck, which had arrived in the mail that day. One hundred ninety-eight dollars. That was it. That was all he had going for him. He had just lost his job and his car and most likely his license, and he had slept with his friend’s wife, and all he had to show for his life was a check for $198. And a handful of little white pills that Mitch had given him. He took another one.
The phone rang. It was Linda, the call he had been dreading. He had so many things he wanted to say to her, serious things about right and wrong and betrayal and friendship, things that had been circling madly in his mind for the past few days. He wasn’t used to keeping secrets and he hated the feeling that he might make an errant comment to Mitch or Kevin. Skills of deceit were not in his DNA.
“How are you?” she asked. Her tone was cheerful, which he wasn’t expecting. He had imagined their next conversation would be a somber rehashing of events, full of admissions of shame and phrases like “never again.” Instead she sounded happy, energetic, and friendly, which made Doug nervous.
“I’m good,” he said, wondering how to play this. Maybe she just didn’t want to share her angst on the phone.
“I was just wondered how your day was going,” she said pleasantly, not sounding at all angst-ridden. “I miss you. We haven’t talked in a couple of days.”
Doug wanted to point out that prior to two weeks ago they had never talked at all. Accidentally having an affair with his friend’s wife was one thing, but having her call up and pretend it had never happened was not only insulting, it was confusing. What was this about? Should he join her in the pretense that they were just friends? Yeah. He should. Maybe that was the answer and Linda had figured it out. If they both pretended they had never had sex, maybe the whole thing would just go away.