Powder smoke hung in a clot. The room hummed with vanished noise. We stood there, grave and giddy.
I shook, and laid the pistol on the coffee table. My stomach cramped, and I wanted a cigarette. I wanted to see the body. I started to move, but Davis popped up, waved his Beretta.
Brianna swooped in and wrapped him in her arms.
“Baby,” he cried. “Was that dramatic? Was it worthy?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Not a scratch! How did it look?”
“It was radically transgressive,” she said. “Of something.”
Davis nuzzled his lady, shoved her away.
“Now we must complete this man deed.”
“No,” said Brianna. “No, sweetie. The piece landed perfectly. Don’t fiddle.”
“It’s okay,” I said, lighting a Korean cigarette I’d mooched from a pack on the table.
“It is?” said the girl by the stereo.
“Davis’ll put one in your frontal cortex,” said the Texan.
“No, he won’t,” I said.
“You going to duck it like Davis?” said the goblin.
“Just watch.”
Davis hocked a loogie and leveled his gun. The room got quiet. Davis winked, lowered the Beretta.
“No, no,” he said with the quiet and cadence of a maestro. “I think I’ll take my shot another day. I think I’ll wait. Until our friend here is a little older. When he’s lost his bunny-like nihilist strut. When he’s discovered love. When he’s struck a truce with feeling. When his every thought and action isn’t guided by childish terror. When he’s graduated from douchebaggery. When he truly understands all that he’s about to lose. Let’s forget these shenanigans for now. Just a little show. But you, buddy of my heart, you’d best watch the ridges and the roads. It could be years from now, but watch for the ragged rider’s approach. He comes only for his shot.”
“And…scene,” I said. We’d taken some drama classes together. The others clapped hard for our skit, or the oratory, really. Davis, wasted in the right ratios, was a natural. We both took a bow.
—
I had one of those phones that did everything, but I could never master the simplest apps. Every time I tried to add to my schedule, these words would flash on the calendar display: “This appointment occurs in the past.” I grew to rely on the feature. It granted me texture, a sense of rich history.
I was remarking on this to Davis in the midtown diner where we’d agreed to meet. I suppose you could call it a retro diner, but what diner isn’t? They’re all designed to make you think fried food won’t kill you because it’s the 1950s and nobody knows any better, and besides, there’s a chance you haven’t been born yet.
We dug into our bacon and cheddar chili burgers. I watched Davis chew.
He didn’t look sick at all. He was still ugly but a good deal less so. Some men get handsome later. It’s up to them to make it count. He’d replaced his granny glasses with modish steel frames. He looked scientific, artistic, somebody trained to talk to astronauts about their dreams. He eyed me over his drippy meat.
“That’s funny,” he said. “I could look at your phone, maybe fix it.”
“No,” I said. “I like it that way.”
We were silent for a moment.
“So,” I said. “The ragged rider.”
“Indeed.”
“You look fantastic. I thought you’d be much more winnowed.”
“It’s not that kind of disease.”
“What kind is it?”
“We’re still working on that. The doctors.”
“I’m sorry. Whatever it is.”
“It’s in the blood. They know that. I’m sorry, too. But at least it’s given me an excuse to gather my old friends.”
“We haven’t talked since—”
“Since graduation,” said Davis.
“No,” I said. “That other time.”
We’d run into each other in a cocktail lounge in San Francisco several years after college. Davis wore a suit of disco white and toasted the would-be silicon barons at his table. I, assistant manager of this spacey blue sleazepit for the young and almost rich, sloshed Dom in their flutes. Davis slipped me some cash and a wink, but he flailed in a world beyond his code capacity. His group appeared composed of algorithmic gangsters, expert wielders of their petty and twisty Jewish, Welsh, Cambodian, Nubian, and Mayan brains. They hadn’t spent their undergraduate years soused, brandishing pistols and theory. They’d been those morose, slightly chippy bots I’d noticed at the refectory whenever I rolled in for some transitional pancakes after a night of self-bludgeoning. They were churls with huge binders, and I’d always known they were my betters.
“Be honest,” said Davis at the bar. “Are you gunning for maître d’ or is this research for a screenplay?”
“I’m trying to pay my rent, sycophant.”
“We were like brothers.”
“Cain and the other one.”
“That’s true. So what’s your life plan?”
“Drinking,” I said. “One day at a time.”
“These people here think I’m Swiss,” said Davis. “They think I have PhDs in cognitive science and computer engineering. There’s a serious tip involved if you help maintain my cover.”
“What’s the angle?”
“I need them to work for stock options. I’ve got a start-up. It’s called the Buddy System Network. You become friends with people online, share your opinions, your stories, put up pictures. Only connect, right? What do you think?”
“I think you’re a freaking crackpot. Your idea is ludicrous. People aren’t machines.”
“If you’d read more great literature, you’d know that machines are exactly what people are.”
Now, as we sat in the diner, Davis — the new, dying, steely, reframed Davis — dragged a waffle fry through his chili burger sauce.
“So what have you been doing?” I said, thoughtless as usual.
“Right now I seem to be dying. Before that I was looking to break into your line of work. Sponging off wealthy women. My tangelo flow isn’t what it used to be. The economy mugged the Davis dynasty. Come to my place tomorrow, will you? It would mean a lot to me.”
—
That night, back in my shimmering crypt, I called Martha in Michigan.
“This is crazy,” I said. “Let’s patch it up.”
“You turd, I’m married again.”
“Oh, right,” I said. “Scott. How well does he grill?”
“We’re vegans now.”
“No dairy?”
“Kills the sex drive.”
“So that’s what it was.”
“No, honey, it was other things with us.”
“How’s your mom?”
“Let’s not revisit that incident.”
“Incident? Try era.”
“I’ve got to go.”
Down in the hotel bar, I thought of how much Davis and I still had to discuss. Our friendship, for example, and how quickly we’d passed through each other, from fascinated strangers to loyal chums to relics of each other’s worlds. We’d been pawns of proximity, choiceless as brothers. I’d always sort of hated him, really, his arrogance, his masks, his whispery fake ways with my mind. I’d been nothing to him, just his handsome stooge, a barker for his depraved tent.
Now, I could tell you my family history and you could do some amateur noodle prods, conclude I needed one such as Davis to salve my certain hurts. Was it the time my mother beat my hands with a serving spoon while I stood enchanted by the ripples in her gray rayon blouse? Or the occasion my father recited a limerick that began “There once was a dumb fucking boy / who was never his daddy’s joy”? Yes, we could solve for why, but we could also eat another slice of coconut cake. Why won’t save you, anyway. Why makes it worse. And Davis, I realized, he wasn’t sick.