Brendan dropped his fork onto his plate and buried his face in his longyears. "Tony." He cracked his fingers so that he could peer at his friend. In front of him, Tony's cheeseburger platter was almost untouched, the ghostly red outline of a heart just visible alongside the pickle. "Listen. I hate to be the one to give you the bad news about Santa Claus, but—"
"But this is real. Ogden Orff was real—or, well, Chip Crockett was. They were real," Tony repeated, pounding the table. "Real."
"Yeah, but Tony! They don't matter. They never mattered! I mean, it's cute and nice that you can find this stuff and look at the funny pictures and all, but Jesus Christ! You're forty-three years old! I got my access bill and you spent thirty-nine hours online in the last two weeks. That's a lot of Ogden fucking Orff, Tony. And to tell you the truth, I'm kind of—"
"I'll pay you back. I'll pay you right now, here—"
Brendan made a tired gesture as Tony fumbled in his pocket. Dollar bills fluttered around him, coins chinked across the table and onto the floor in a steady rain. "I don't want your money, Tony. I definitely don't want it in nickels and dimes—stop, for chrissake! Listen to me—
"I know you just started working again, but—well, you've got to, like, get a life, Tony. A real life. You can't spend all your time online, looking at pictures of Ogden Orff."
"Why not?" The look Tony gave Brendan was definitely hostile. "Why the fuck not? What do you think I should do? Huh? Mister Big-Time lawyer. What, are you pulling in thirty grand these days, after you make child support? Forty?"
"That has nothing to—"
"Yes it does! Or, well—no it doesn't, does it?" The hostility drained from Tony's face. Suddenly all he looked was tired, and sad, and every one of his forty-three years old. "Hey man. I'm sorry. I was out of line there, with that money stuff—"
"It's okay, Tony."
"Way out of line. 'Cause like, I know you could earn more if you wanted to. Right?" Tony raised his eyebrows, then looked away. "But, like, I understand that you don't want to. I identify with your integrity, man. I respect it. I really do."
"My what?" Without warning, Brendan began to laugh. "My integrity? My integrity? Oh Tony. You big dope!" Hard; harder than he'd laughed in a long time, maybe since before Peter was born. Maybe since before he was married, when slowly everything had stopped being funny — because what was funny about being married, especially when you didn't stay married? Or having a kid, even a perfectly normal boring healthy kid; or a job, a perfectly normal healthy job that you hated? There was nothing funny about any of that; there was nothing fun about it at all.
And there was Tony Maroni, with his soulful dopey eyes, his long greying hair and stretched Silly Putty face, his black leather jacket with its Jimmy Carter campaign button rusted to the lapel and the faxed copy of Chip Crockett's obituary still wadded in one pocket. Tony who remembered the words to every back-of-the-schoolbus song they'd sung thirty-five years ago; Tony who had dedicated a song to his childhood friends, and treasured Officer Joe Bolton's autograph as though it were the Pope's; Tony who'd nearly wept when PeeWee Herman got booted off the air; who did weep, as a kid, when he'd gotten the bad news about the North Pole.
Tony Maroni was fun. Tony Maroni was funny. Most of all, Tony Maroni had integrity. Sort of.
"What?" Tony tilted his head, puzzled. "What?"
"Nothing." Brendan shook his head, wiping his eyes. "Nothing—just, you know—"He flapped his longyear and coughed, trying to calm down. "Me. You. All this stuff."
Now Tony sounded suspicious. "All what stuff?"
"Life. You thinking I have integrity, when—"
The laughter started up again: spurts of it, hot somehow and painful, like blood. Laughing blood, Brendan thought, but couldn't stop. "—when I'm just—a—a—terrible—lawyer!"
"Awwww." Tony rubbed his forehead and frowned. Then he started laughing, too. " 'No, Ogden, no!' " he said, imitating Chip Crockett. " 'Don't file that tort!' "
Brendan lifted his head. His pale blue eyes were brilliant, almost feverishly so; but there was a kind of calm in them, too. Like a beach that's been storm-scoured, all the sand castles and traces of an endless hot afternoon smoothed away, so that only a few still sky-reflecting pools remain.
Calm. That was how he felt. Their waiter passed and Brendan smiled at him, signaling for the check; then turned back to Tony. "Okay. So maybe you can show me that Web site."
Tony's face cracked into a grin like Humpty Dumpty's. "Sure, man! Absolutely!"
"And maybe you can write me a check—not now, jeez, Tony. When you get settled. More settled. Whenever."
The waiter brought the check. Brendan paid it. Tony left the tip, in little neatly-stacked piles of quarters and dimes and nickels. On the way out Tony held the door as Brendan shrugged into his heavy camel's hair coat, still smiling. As he stepped past him onto the sidewalk Brendan tripped, catching himself as he lurched between an immaculately dressed Capitol Hill couple who scowled as Brendan drew himself up, laughing, alongside his friend.
"That's my attorney," said Tony fondly. "Ogden Orff."
Thanksgiving Day dawned clear and warm, the air glittering with that magical blue-gold tinge Brendan recalled from his undergrad days—late-autumn light that seemed to seep into the pores of even the most disenchanted bureaucrats in their holiday-weekend drag of paint-spattered chinos and faded Springsteen T-shirts, rearranging leaves on vest-pocket lawns with their Smith & Hawken rakes. That was what Teri was doing when he went to pick up Peter at The House Formerly Known as Brendan's, way up Connecticut Avenue just past the Bethesda line.
"Hi, Teri," he said, stepping from the car and hopping over a brown heap at the edge of the driveway. "How you doing? Where's the boy?"
Teri paused, balancing the rake on her shoulder like a musket, and cocked a thumb at the house behind her. "Taking a nap. You can go wake him if you want."
Brendan nodded. His ex-wife as always looked harried, her short hair stuck with twigs and her dark eyes narrowed with a furious concentration that seemed expended needlessly upon innocent dead leaves. "Great," he said. "What're you doing today? Kevin said—"
"Leon's coming over. We're going out to Harper's Ferry."
Leon was Teri's paralegal, a wispy young man ten years her junior who'd been her companionate default since before the divorce was final. Brendan had never been able to figure out if Leon was sleeping with his ex-wife, if he were even heterosexual, or a careerist, or what? "That's nice," he said. "Well, Kevin and Eileen send their love."
"And Tony?" Eileen swung the rake down from her shoulder, plonked it in the ground in front of her and leaned on the longyearle. To Brendan it still looked like a musket.
"Tony?"
"Does Tony send his love? I understand he's living at your place these days."
"Tony! Oh, sure, Tony sends his love." Brendan kicked at the leaves, noticed Teri's wince of disapproval and quickly began nudging them back into place with his foot. "Loads of hugs and kisses from Tony Maroni."
"Hm." Teri eyed him measuringly. Then, "You should have told me."