“Now that,” Nolan said, “is what you call dodging a bullet.”
I nodded, glad at least to see that Nolan and Jeffrey were willing to be in the same room again.
“I’ll tell you this,” Jeffrey said. “That girl deserves a medal. I agree with her—forty thousand dollars isn’t enough for what she’s put up with.”
Nolan was sitting on the sofa, eyes closed. He didn’t even bother to open them as he gave Jeffrey the finger. I couldn’t help laughing.
He opened his eyes. “Don’t fucking laugh. There’s nothing funny about this.”
But I was giddy from the close call. The release of tension felt entirely welcome. We laugh at funerals. Why not now?
“He’s right,” Jeffrey said. “Seriously, Will. Cut it out.”
I balled up a sheet of paper, faked a throw at Nolan, and whipped it at Jeffrey. It hit him in the head. “You fucking crazy fuckmunch,” I said to him with as much feeling as those words can carry.
“What did you just call me?”
“You heard me, fuckmunch.”
He smiled a little—not the crazed grin from before. A human smile. “You’re right. I really, really am.”
I’ve heard that in mountain climbing, most injuries occur on the descent. This makes perfect sense to me. One’s attention can remain in a heightened state for only so long. When we head downward, we relax a little; we let ourselves appreciate the view. And that’s when we find ourselves tumbling into a crevasse.
I should have followed Joey to the door and locked it behind him. Everyone makes mistakes. Joey’s were trivial. He talked too much and he sometimes forgot to slam the damn door so it locked. I knew this about him. I should’ve followed him to the door.
I rewound The Fixtures’ tape and was putting it back into its case with the easy arrogance of somebody who believed he’d be finishing that recording in a few days. That simple action, boxing up the tape for another day, revealed to me, in immediate hindsight, that at some deep level I still believed that when the weekend was over, I’d go back to my ordinary life and nothing would have changed.
To my credit, the moment I set the box back on its shelf I realized what I’d just done, and what it said about me. But by then it was too late. When I looked up again, a man was standing in the center of the main recording room, looking straight at Marie and waving.
21
He sometimes wandered in from the street when Joey left the door unlocked, which was why I never left it unlocked.
“Get out of here!” I yelled, not that he could hear me through the thick glass. After a quick explanation—“Homeless guy”—I left the control room and went into the recording room. “Out of here, right now!”
“Cute girl,” he said. “Who is she?”
By now Nolan and Jeffrey were on my heels.
“She’s nobody,” Nolan said.
Marie was looking at us with an expression of mild curiosity. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d save anybody. She probably assumed he was another one of my friends.
“She’s recording an album,” I said. “I mean it—out, or I’m calling the police.” I had him by the arm, and before Marie could change her mind and begin pounding on the locked door, I’d led him out of the studio and into the hallway.
As soon as I let go of him, he stopped walking. He had a moldy, boozy smell. “My friend,” he said, “those submarine sandwiches you were out buying today were probably delicious. I could use one of them subs myself, if you could spare a dollar …”
I didn’t like the idea of him watching me without my noticing. What else had he seen? Nolan got out his wallet, removed a twenty, and held it out. The man’s eyes got huge. “You’re going to leave right now and not come back. Isn’t that right?”
“My friend, everything you say is right.” He wasn’t taking his eyes off the bill.
When Nolan handed it to him, he held it up by its ends like a prize fish, then tucked it into the pocket of his flannel shirt.
“Now find some other street,” I told him. “Somewhere across town.” But why would he cross town, knowing he could get twenty dollars from us?
“As good as done,” he said. “God bless. You’re good men.”
“Sure we are,” I said. “Now go.”
He took his time walking down the hallway and out the door. I slammed the door behind him, and like a fool hanging a smoke detector on the charred embers of his burned-out house, I made certain it was locked.
Evan called from the airport, where he’d bought a ticket for Newark. The flight was scheduled to leave at 4 PM Central Time. But weather in the Twin Cities had worsened. No spring blizzard, as some had predicted, but freezing rain and lots of it.
“So far no flights have been canceled,” he said, “but it’s coming down hard.” He promised to call again when he had an update.