I started a pot of coffee and went into the bathroom. A half hour later, I emerged clean and shaved and feeling half alive. And ravenous. I put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and ordered a large pizza for delivery.
I poured myself a cup of coffee, flopped onto the sofa in the living room, and turned on the television. I flipped the channels, looking for special news segments, interrupted programs. This is how I’ll watch TV from now on, I thought. But soon I settled on a baseball game, and for a while I watched it, until Nolan came through the front door covered in sweat.
“Good run?” I asked.
“I’m getting too old to skip days,” he said. “This was exactly what I needed.” He wiped his face with his T-shirt. “Except, now I’m starving.”
“Pizza’s already on the way—sausage and peppers.”
“Pizza?” He shook his head. “We can do better than pizza. Call them back. Cancel the order.”
“You have something better in mind?”
“As a matter of fact, I do.” He smiled. “What’s the best restaurant in town?”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going there. My treat.” He went into the kitchen and returned a minute later with a glass of water. “I think you and I need to have a first-class dinner.”
“You sure about that?”
“Cancel the damn pizza, Will.” He chugged the rest of the water and went to put the glass in the sink. “I’m going to take a shower. Afterward, maybe you can help me change this damn bandage. In the meantime, make reservations. And don’t be cheap about it.”
While Nolan took a shower, I called the pizzeria, and then went online to see if La Cachette was open on Sundays. I’d never eaten there before—way too pricey—but it wasn’t far away, and I’d read somewhere that it was the governor’s favorite restaurant.
? ? ?
Our table was by the window of the converted Victorian mansion. When we were seated, and had ordered a bottle of wine and the special fruit and aged-cheese appetizer, Nolan said, “So that sound board, in the studio. You said it’s getting replaced?”
“In a couple of months. That’s the plan, anyway.”
“So what’ll make the new one better than the old one?”
He really seemed interested. Maybe this was a politician’s trick, but I didn’t think so. More likely, the trick was that for some people, being interested in the details of others’ lives wasn’t a trick.
“Well,” I said, “for one thing, the old console is just plain busted. Certain tracks don’t work at all, or they’re noisy, or unpredictable. But the main difference is that the new one will be digital.”
“Everything’s going digital now, it seems.”
“Just about. It used to be that digital recording didn’t sound very good. But now the sampling rates are so high, it’s nearly impossible to tell the difference between digital and analog.”
“So why do it?”
“Easier editing, easier backup … basically, a lot more flexibility because you’re dealing with files of data rather than tape.”
“But you’ll have to learn the new console. Will that be hard?”
“Not too hard,” I said. “The basic principles are the same.”
“I’ll bet you’re good at your job,” he said.
I thought about it a minute. “I am. It isn’t glamorous work. But I think I make the bands I work with sound better.”
A basket of bread had come, and we each took a piece.
“I really like this restaurant,” he said, looking around. “Good choice. You don’t find many French restaurants in Missouri.”
I’d nearly finished my glass of wine. I felt soothed by it, and by the clink of silverware against fine dishes and the quiet conversations going on at the other tables. People around us seemed to be enjoying their meals, their wine, one another’s company. Checks lay unpaid on tables while cups of coffee got refilled and wide slices of pie were slowly chipped away at. A world of worry and hurt waited outside, beyond the valet-parked lot, and nobody seemed in a rush to get there. Nolan had been right. We needed this. I refilled my glass.
“Do you remember,” he was saying, “when you tried to speak French to that girl in our dorm freshman year?”
Of course I remembered. Just as I remembered Nolan—or Evan or Jeffrey—reminding me about it any number of times over the years. Three evenings ago this would have bothered me, but now I felt glad for this ready-made role I could step into, this simpler version of myself that I could inhabit.
“Sandy,” I said.
“Sandy, of course.” He laughed. “The girl whose goat you loved. Tell me again what it was in French?”
I sighed. “J’aime votre chèvre.”
He laughed some more. “Sandy, I love your goat. How can you beat that?”
I’d thought chèvre meant hair. I’d only taken a few weeks of French.
He finished his glass of wine and poured another. “Well, nobody could blame you for trying. You weren’t the only nineteen-year-old in love with Sandy and her long blonde goat.”