Malcolm was about to ask more but just then Jess’s phone rang and she put on headphones to take the call. She said something about joint tenancy, the right of survivorship. If she were still at the firm, he would assume it was a case, but it didn’t quite line up with the work he imagined she did at Bloom.
The town where the Lydons lived was less than an hour from Charleston, a place Malcolm had always wanted to see but hadn’t gotten to yet. Fort Sumter, the antebellum mansions, a sense of somewhere totally different. After fourteen hours in the car, they stopped at a gas station and washed up as best they could, put on fresh clothes.
“What are you going to say?” Jess asked.
“I don’t know,” Malcolm said.
The house was more modest than either of them expected it to be. It was nine o’clock on Saturday morning, and Hugh’s Cadillac was in the driveway, a cat sitting in the shade of the bumper. By the time Malcolm turned off the engine, Hugh was standing at the door. From a distance of forty feet, he looked like any overweight old man. Why had it come to this? Malcolm wondered as he felt the long fuse of his temper ignite. Hugh could have just answered his phone, returned his call. They could have come to an agreement. But Hugh wanted him to beg, Malcolm understood. He wanted Malcolm to feel a little ridiculous. Maybe that’s all he ever wanted, making Malcolm wait so long for the chance to own the bar. How long between Hugh first mentioning it and actually walking away? Twelve years of hoping and expecting it to happen any day. A place that meant so much to him that he didn’t realize it was on its last legs.
“Wait here,” Malcolm said.
“No way!” Jess said.
“Malcolm,” Hugh said, holding the door open for them. He turned to call into the room behind him, “Josephine, look who came to see us.” Neither of them seemed the least bit surprised.
“Is your phone broken, Hugh?” Malcolm said, and felt Jess press his arm.
Josephine Lydon showed them to a screened porch out back, where there were several ashtrays filled with butts. The temperature was already near seventy and muggy. Hugh settled into an armchair, and Josephine asked if anyone wanted tea. Hugh seemed heavier than he’d been in New York and had a rosy sheen on his skin. Malcolm had never before seen him in shorts, short sleeves, his dimpled joints, the coarse rust-colored hair that covered him.
“Now,” Josephine said when she’d arranged muffins and teacups. She looked at Jess. “Will we leave them to it?”
“Thank you, but I’m fine here,” Jess said.
“Oh,” Josephine said, and looked at Hugh.
“Jess,” Malcolm said.
“Malcolm,” Jess said.
“It’s all right,” Hugh said, and Josephine disappeared somewhere inside the house. “I hear you’re having some weather up there.”
“The whole town lost power for almost a week and it’s crazy cold, single digits. Everything is shut down. Part of the high school roof collapsed.”
Jess looked back and forth between them as if to ask if they were really talking about the weather.
“But the Half Moon is okay? Didn’t I tell you that place had good bones?”
Malcolm nodded, took a breath.
“I assume you’re here because you can’t keep up with your end of our deal. I’ve been in touch with Billy. I don’t understand. When I stepped away, the place was doing great.”
“I’m not trying to get out of anything. You know me. You know I wouldn’t do that,” Malcolm said. “I just thought, given how long we’ve known each other, if you could make the monthly payments lower, or if we renegotiated the interest. You told me that I’d get grandfathered into your vendor contracts and I took your word for it. But you must have known that would be impossible.”
“You don’t do your research before making an investment so big?” Hugh said. “And it’s my fault that you didn’t? I heard you got rid of the pool table. People loved that thing.”
“It was filthy,” Malcolm said. “And it took up too much room.”
And then Hugh turned his attention to Jess for the first time. “I’m surprised to see you here, Jess. Aren’t you living over in Azalea Estates now?”
Jess looked stunned, and her face flushed a deep red. Malcolm spoke quickly. “I was thinking we could work out a percentage of what I bring in each month. Slow months you’d get less, okay, busy months more, but you’d always get your cut and then I’d chip away at the note and you’d have income. The way it’s structured now—I just can’t do it. I need time to come up with a strategy to bring people in and build a little buzz. None of the usual things are working.”
“Slow months I’d get nothing, is what you mean.”
“I’m trying, Hugh. You’ll get everything you’re owed, it’ll just take longer than I thought.”
“Or,” Hugh said. “You could sell your house. You’ve owned it for what? Thirteen years? Values have gone way up. There must be quite a bit of equity. That would take care of it.”
“My house?” Malcolm repeated. His house wasn’t part of Hugh’s world. His house was Jess’s domain, all her patterned throw blankets and bowls, all the vases and candles she placed around to make it look sweet. Her stacks of books. Her running pants on the drying rack. He stood up as he took in what was happening, as it sank in that he was powerless in this situation, and anything he suggested would be received with total disregard, as if no one had made the suggestion at all. Nothing mattered to Hugh. Not their long history, not the fact that he’d been his best, most loyal employee for so many years.
“You’re an asshole, Hugh, you know that? I don’t get what the point was. Of any of it.”
“I’m sorry, but the house is your only asset. I’d never have lent you that money if you didn’t have it.”
“Hugh?” Jess said, but the men ignored her.
“And I’m the asshole?” Hugh went on. “You think you deserve something better than what you got? You’re every bit as arrogant as your father was. You’re what? Forty-five years old? You’re blaming me because you don’t have your life together? Hughie says you were always decent to him when you were in school together, and I appreciate that. But if one of my boys failed as miserably as you did with the Half Moon, I’d be embarrassed to know him. At least your father knew what he had to do to make a place really work.”
“Hugh,” Jess said again with some force. She stood, stepped in front of Malcolm. Hugh looked at her like he might look at a child who’d walked in and interrupted the adults. “Are you completely sure you were within your rights to sell the Half Moon in the first place?”
“What?” Hugh said.
Malcolm could feel the momentum that had been building skip a beat. He felt a chill, as if a ghost had come striding through.
“If I were to pull the property records right now, are you sure I wouldn’t see any names except yours and Malcolm’s?”
It seemed for a moment like Hugh was going to heave his giant body to standing, but instead he stayed seated, looked at Jess. “What are you talking about?”
“The land the building is sitting on.”
The land, Malcolm repeated in his mind, the words becoming tactile, like something he could touch.
“What about it?” Hugh asked, but Malcolm knew that sneer. Something about what Jess was saying had him rattled.
“You signed the land over to Darren Gephardt in 1975 to make good on a debt.”
“What?” Hugh asked just as Malcolm had the very same thought. What?
Malcolm wanted badly for her to look at him, but her eyes were locked on Hugh.