The coincidence of running into Bobby wasn’t so great. Despite his frequent New York gigs, he’d moved to Jersey a couple of years ago, to his brother’s place not far from here, to save on rent.
“Lycanthrope,” he said. “Tell me that’s not the shit.” I hadn’t seen him in probably a month or more, but our conversation about naming his new band continued as if there’d been no interruption. “Seriously,” he said, “what do you think?”
This was no time to engage him in conversation, but I didn’t want him to think I was acting strangely. So I told Bobby that Lycanthrope was about the worst name I’d ever heard, which was saying a lot considering what I’d heard.
He gave me the finger, yawned, scratched his stomach underneath his T-shirt, and told me about his gig at Blackbirds this coming Thursday. Blackbirds was a small club in the East Village whose dubious claim to fame was that the Spin Doctors had gotten their start there fifteen years earlier.
“We’ve been working a cellist into a few tunes,” he said. “She went to Juilliard for a year.”
“Why only a year?”
“You’re missing the point. The point is, she’s killer. And really hot.” He sipped his coffee. “Really hot.”
Bobby was my last remaining link to a life I once led, and seeing him always aroused my pity and envy.
“I’ll try to be there,” I said, and looked at my watch. “Look, I gotta run.”
He grinned. “You’ll be there, huh? You’re such a fucking liar.” He slapped my back and went in search of whatever it was he’d come in for.
“I’m not lying!” I called after him. I meant it, too, or at least I wanted to mean it. But seconds later I was carrying the First Aid & Survival Kit up to the checkout counter, and my thoughts returned to injured ears and stolen people.
The clerk ran the kit through the scanner. “I’ll bet you’re a speedboater,” he said, “am I right?”
“No,” I said.
“Rock climber?”
I shook my head. “Sorry.” I ran my credit card through the machine.
He handed me my receipt and I signed it.
“Well, whatever it is,” he said, “you be careful.”
I didn’t know Evan’s cell phone number from memory. It had been stored in my own cell, now smashed to bits. If his home number wasn’t listed, then I would have to drive back to the house to get it out of my address book. With Nolan’s injury there wasn’t time for that. I parked my car at the gas station, exchanged some singles for quarters, and dialed directory assistance. The operator asked me to repeat the last name three times, and then to spell it. Finally I was given the number.
I got his answering machine. There was no choice but to leave a message, simple and unambiguous: Call me at the studio. It’s urgent. We need you here. I left the studio’s phone number on the machine.
And then, as an afterthought: Be sure you erase this message.
Not until I’d parked behind the studio again, and my stomach cramped up so hard that I saw floating flecks before my eyes, did it occur to me that I’d forgotten to take the Pepto-Bismol up to the register.
18
I sat there with the engine running, hugging my gut and waiting for the pain to pass.
How was it, I wondered, that I’d crossed over to a world that gave weight to the rules of revenge? We were merely four friends who met up each year for golf. For some good meals and beer and cards. For joking around and reminiscing.
What could be simpler?
In all the years we’d spent together, I hadn’t once considered whether Jeffrey might still harbor some deep grudge. And why would he? He’d married Sara. He’d gotten the girl. He’d won.
So why, then, the violence? Why the attack? Did he really believe he’d been protecting Marie from Nolan? Or was it something else? And did he himself even know? This was, after all, the same man who’d kidnapped Marie fewer than twenty-four hours earlier. All I could come up with was that his recent problems with Sara must have dug up emotions that’d been buried ever since that one fraught night nine years earlier.
It almost hadn’t been a problem, either. We’d just about graduated. Only a couple more days. We’d already stripped our dorm room walls of posters and prints and bulletin boards, stuffed dirty clothes into suitcases, stacked textbooks and notebooks and a year of assignments into cardboard boxes. Sara had even begun to tape shut some of the boxes in her room. She just hadn’t gotten around to taping all of them.
That close.