The stooped, older man next to Wonsley was Alec Bacall. There was a hollowness in the pouches above and below his cheekbones, as though someone had let the air out of his face. It had been only three weeks since I'd driven Bacall to South Boston after the library debate.
Wonsley said, "Oh. John, right?" The brown eyes were soft but a little unsure of what to say next.
I introduced Nancy while Bacall bundled up, a heavy scarf over his throat and mouth like a Berber tribesman.
Bacall said, "Got a bit of a cold, I'm afraid."
I nodded, and Nancy preempted an awkward silence by taking Bacall's arm and leading him into the foyer, leaving me with Wonsley several steps, and intervening people, behind.
I said, "Is Alec all right?"
Wonsley's expression didn't change. "He's having problems with his insulin dosage. It's not working right sometimes. In fact, this is the first time since before Christmas we've been out. Alec wanted to… we met, sort of, on First Night, last year."
"Has he been to see a doctor?"
"Yes. At the… a clinic. He recommended Alec have some tests."
Wons1ey's expression still didn't change, but the eyes got softer. He didn't say what the tests would be for, and I didn't ask.
We said good-bye briskly on the sidewalk. As Wonsley and Bacall moved away, I asked Nancy if she'd mind cutting our celebration a little short.
22
IT WAS A MILD MORNING SEVERAL WEEKS INTO THE NEW YEAR, temperature in the mid-fifties, Boston nearly basking in the January thaw. I chanced wearing just a sweatshirt and shorts. I spotted him from the Fairfield footbridge to the river. Sitting on his bench, legs crossed, left arm draped over the backrest, right hand on the bench seat. From a distance he looked the same as before. Up close, the tweed jacket had been mended, the glasses newly taped, and the hair freshly cut.
"John." Neutral tone, a substitute for hello.
"Bo. I missed you."
He glanced away, toward the MIT dome. "Been traveling."
The first time Bo had opened up at all. I didn't want to crowd him. "Whereabouts?"
"D.C. area." His eyes rolled up toward the emblem on his Redskins cap. "I used to teach there, John. And coach. Private school."
I leaned against a tree, keeping my shoes on the macadam and out of the mud. "Get tired of it?"
"No."
Bo moved his left hand over to his right wrist, and I was afraid I'd pushed too far. Then he said, "You ever been married, John?"
"Once."
The voice lowered. "Me too. Even had two little daughters, just toddlers then. But things weren't going so good between Adele and me – Adele was my wife. And the school, it was running low on money and had to let go a lot of people with less seniority than I had. The pressure started to mount because the rest of us were expected to take on extra duties for less pay. John, the pressure, all these expectations, at home and at school, started building inside me. It was like living in a double boiler, and it soured me. I lost interest in my teaching, my family, everything but the coaching. I started to fixate on it, truth be told. Then the school dropped the other shoe. Said they just couldn't see their way clear to keep me on. I'd become 'marginal'."
"They fired you?"
"They didn't renew my contract. Discreet way to fire a guy, eh? But it wasn't just the job. We lived free on campus, nice little house, John. Nicest little house you'd ever want to see. All brick and ivy, with hedges and flowers. But when I wasn't renewed, all that was gone. I didn't have a job or a roof over my family's head, not even the coaching anymore. I just plain broke down. I was in an…institution for a time after that."
"For depression?"
"Oh, they had a dozen different names for it, John. From a dozen different doctors pushing a dozen different drugs. And none of them knew jackshit. I finally broke out of the blues some, but only when I realized that it was the pressure of the family as much as the job that did me in."
"Your family."
"Yeah. Adele could see it, too, last few visits to the hospital. Came time to be discharged, like a year later, I didn't have a job, and after what I'd been through, I couldn't exactly see getting another one. Adele had already set herself and the girls up separately, telling them their father was… dead."
"Bo, I'm sorry."
"Hey, it's not so bad. Life on the road, I mean. And once a year, right around the holidays, I go back." Bo passed a hand over an ear. "I get spruced up a bit, and I hitch my way to where they live now. First time, Adele got flustered, introduced me to the girls as a friend of their dad's from the old school. They were so little when I went away, and I'd changed enough in the years since, they didn't recognize me at all. They ask me questions about what their dad was like when I taught with him, and I get to talk with them about me, sort of, only with no pressure, no… expectations."
"You never tried to…"
"What? Get back together again?"
"Yes."
"No. No, Adele and I knew that wouldn't work out. Only one thing worse than losing the people you love, John."
"What's that?"
"Losing them twice."
The eyes moved away to MIT, the right hand massaging the left wrist. "I'm sorry, John."
"About what?"
"About dragging my life into yours."
"Bo, that – "
"No. No, it was my deal, and here I've gone and broke it."
After a minute I said, "You know that Gore-Tex suit?"
Bo's face came back to me. "Huh?"
"Before you left. You said I'd be needing a Gore-Tex running suit."
"Oh. Oh, yeah, right."
"I got one for Christmas. Any suggestions on when and how to wear it?"
He let the wrist alone and, for a moment, seemed not to breathe. Then, "Well. Well, now, a couple of things…"
I spent most of the rest of that January day at the office, servicing some smaller cases and trying not to dwell on Bo. At home, I got a call from Inés Roja. She confirmed that there still had been no more notes. Roja also told me that Andrus and Tucker Hebert were back from the Caribbean and that the professor still wanted to meet me that next morning. At the Ritz-Carlton, no less. Inés sounded embarrassed saying that she thought the Ritz required a jacket and tie, even for bacon and eggs.
I followed the maitre d' through the first-floor dining room. The high windows permitted only filtered light from Newbury Street to strike the crystal and silver spread before the men and women attending power breakfasts.
"We're targeting the ten highest risk companies in the…"
"… course, live years down the pike, will I still be…"
"And our long-term resources just might be compatible with your short-term…"
"… in which case, it would be mainly a northeast program with an acronym of its own."
Maisy Andrus treated me to a radiant smile over the rim of her china cup. She wore a white cotton turtleneck under an Icelandic sweater, the hair a shade lighter from the tropical sun. Her face was tanned, but without the worry lines or leathery look some women her age suffer.
The perfect example of the good life. Maybe an hour earlier, I'd left Bo, in rags on a cold bench.
Andrus suddenly appeared concerned. "John, is anything wrong'?"
"No. Just thinking about something else."
The waiter came over with a cut-glass bucket of fresh juice and took our food orders.
I said to Andrus, "How was the trip?"