“Shit,” he said again.
After shaking his head at this fiasco of his own making, Sam went to wipe the rain off his face, triggering a sharp pain in his cheek. Turning on the overhead light, he looked in the rearview mirror and saw that his shiner was coming along nicely. He could add that to the list of things he was going to have to explain when he got home. But even as he was having this thought, in the corner of the mirror he noticed the proud rectangular figure of the phone booth standing at the side of the road.
His spirits raised by the sight, Sam patted his pants and jacket pockets to see if he had any change—but of course he didn’t. Who the hell had change anymore? He looked down into the tray beside the driver seat, but the car was too new to have accumulated the normal automotive detritus.
Stymied, Sam looked through the windshield.
He certainly wasn’t going back into The Glass Half Full.
But there were still a few other vehicles in the parking lot…
After a moment, Sam got out of his car and slunk toward a nearby pickup that looked even older than the bar. For no good reason, it was locked. Sam moved on to a Chrysler sedan that needed a new paint job. The door handle gave promisingly. Glancing back at the bar, Sam quickly opened the door, slipped into the driver’s seat, and closed the door again so that the overhead light wouldn’t be on for more than a second. As it was dark, Sam reached into his jacket so that he could use the flashlight on his phone. This time, he remembered it was dead before he got it out of his pocket.
In the tray beside the driver’s seat, there were two empty coffee cups. Setting them on the passenger’s seat, Sam reached into the cup holders and felt two dimes stuck to the bottom. They were so stuck, he had to use his fingernails to pry them free. Sam had no idea what a phone call to the city would cost, but it was certainly more than twenty cents. Cognizant that at any moment the owner of the car might emerge from the bar, Sam rifled through the glove compartment to no avail. Then, suddenly, he had a flash from childhood—a vision of raiding his father’s car for loose change in the hopes of going to the movies. Turning ninety degrees, Sam shoved his fingers into the crease between the back and the bottom of the driver’s seat. In a matter of seconds, he felt the unmistakable shape of two quarters. With his muscle memory taking over, Sam pinched the quarters between the tips of two fingers and eased them carefully from the crevice in which they were lodged.
The necessary change in hand, Sam opened the door of the sedan with every intention of getting quickly out. But just as he was sliding from behind the wheel, he noticed the two photographs taped to the dash. Both were of three boys and a girl. In the first picture, which was faded with age, the kids were around eight or nine and standing in front of a quaint little house. On their shoulders, they had oversize backpacks like it was the first day of school. In the second picture, they were standing in the same spot in the same arrangement, but now in their early twenties. It occurred to Sam that this picture was probably taken around the time that Sally had begun to struggle. As Nick had said, she was the runt of the litter, standing half a foot shorter than her brothers. With a deep sense of shame, Sam realized that he had never bothered to ask Nick how his daughter had fared.
Climbing out of the bartender’s car, Sam gave one last look over his shoulder, then ran to the booth at the edge of the lot. When he opened the door, he was startled to have the light go on but then relieved.
“God bless the phone company,” he said.
Holding the door open with a foot so that the light wouldn’t go off, Sam put all of Nick’s change in the slot and dialed Annie’s cell.
But as soon as he heard the call going through, he realized he’d made a big mistake. What he should have dialed was their landline—because Annie never carried her cell phone around the apartment. When she got home, she invariably put it on the credenza by the front door, along with her keys and her wallet. Even if she heard the phone ringing, she would never make it across the apartment in time.
Sure enough, after five rings the phone went to voicemail.
Sam couldn’t remember how long a payphone call lasted, but when the beep came, he didn’t waste any time. He told Annie he was sorry. He told her he was sorry that he was late, sorry that he hadn’t made it for dinner, sorry that he hadn’t been able to call. There were other things he was sorry about, too, but, worried that he was running out of time, he paused, expecting a recorded voice to interrupt and demand twenty-five cents for another two minutes.
But Sam hadn’t run out of time, and he found himself standing there holding the receiver to his ear without speaking—like someone who was waiting for the person at the other end of the line to respond.
“Annie, I’m so sorry,” he finally began, but the line went dead.
Sam stepped out of the phone booth into the rain and found himself looking up at the neon sign. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, or maybe some of the neon tubing momentarily reflected the headlights of an oncoming car, but Sam was almost certain that for one clear second the olive at the bottom of the martini glass blinked on.
After staring for a moment, Sam strode to his car. Letting the door close at its own pace, he pushed the ignition and drove to the exit.
Where would you like to go? asked the GPS.
But Sam turned off the system. He didn’t need it to tell him how to get to where he was going.
At 10:45, Nick and Beezer were sitting alone in the empty bar at one of the four-tops with a cup of coffee and a glass of beer. It was closing time, more or less, and Nick had some cleaning up to do, so he should probably have sent Beezer on his way, but it was still raining and Beezer didn’t have a car, so Nick decided to give him one on the house while he was having his coffee. On occasion, Nick did that—let Beezer stay for a while after closing, as long as he didn’t talk too much.
As they sat there drinking quietly, reflectively, the door to The Glass Half Full swung open and in walked Mr. Contours, drenched to the bone. Standing in the doorway, he gave the bar a once-over. Then he put a hand in his suit pocket and began advancing toward their table. For a moment, Nick wondered if this crazy bastard had returned with a gun. Beezer must have thought the same thing, because his face went white. But when Contours reached their table, he collapsed into the chair across from Nick and, without saying a word, took his hand from his pocket and slammed something down. When he removed his hand, there in the middle of the table, illuminated by an overhead lamp, was a small plastic container, at the bottom of which was a cloudy white substance.
“Holy shit!” said Beezer, pushing his chair back with a jolt, like it was some kind of explosive.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Nick.
Contours didn’t look smug. He didn’t look smart or victorious. He looked like someone on the verge of a resolution.
Without Nick or Beezer asking, he explained that when he went back to Vitek, he had to bang on the door for fifteen minutes before a security guard would let him in. It took another fifteen minutes to get some guy named HT on the phone so that he could get back his kit and caboodle.
When he finished talking, neither Nick nor Beezer spoke. The three of them sat there in silence, not looking at each other so much as at the middle of the table—at that small plastic container in which there was and wasn’t their future. In which there was and wasn’t ours.
A NOTE FROM THE CURATOR OF THE FORWARD COLLECTION