The Affair (17 page)

A sudden tapping on the glass made him jump. He could see Jimmy’s round face peering in.

The smartest thing Robert could do would be to end the affair. But whenever Stephanie touched him, pressed herself against him, breathed in his ear, he felt young again. He felt alive. And he could feel his resolve failing.

Jimmy tapped on the glass again.

Robert shook his head fiercely. He wasn’t going to lose anything. He was too careful. Much too careful.

“I
’m really sorry about Top of the Hub,” Robert said again as they looked up at the Prudential Center in the distance.

“There’s no problem,” Jimmy said again. “Really. None at all.” He reached out and patted Robert’s shoulder. “Forget about it. Besides, that food’s too rich for my blood anyway.” He patted his stomach. “I’d spend the next two days paying for it.”

In his youth, Jimmy Moran had been one of the handsomest men in his hometown of Dublin, Ireland. Tall, elegant, and fine-featured, the director and producer had been a regular in the social pages and had been involved in bringing some huge movie productions to his homeland in the eighties and early nineties. It had been confidently expected that he was going to be Ireland’s answer to Francis Ford Coppola. But he had never lived up to those expectations; two hugely expensive productions had foundered with enormous debts and had tainted him with the whiff of scandal when it was discovered that he’d made sure to pay himself before anyone else, including the internationally famous stars. Time moved on, and a lifetime of excess had blurred his fine features, bloating his nose and dappling his cheeks with broken veins. Jimmy was fifty-two—he looked sixty—though his hair was still jet-black and he swore he didn’t dye it.

Jimmy had left Ireland twenty years earlier, and he’d deliberately kept his Irish brogue. Initially, he’d hoped to continue his directing work in Los Angeles; however, he had quickly discovered it was a town of young people with young ideas. He had moved to Boston where the film community was smaller, more manageable, and less ageist. He’d managed to get a small, no-frills quiz show off the ground, which paid the bills, and then he soon started finding success in front of the camera rather than behind it. Jimmy had gotten regular bit work as a heavy in many of the Boston-based films, including
The Departed, Mystic River,
and all of the Ben Affleck films. There had been a time when he might have been able to translate that success into something bigger, but his fondness for the drink put paid to that.

Jimmy had originally met Robert when he had auditioned for and gotten a part in a beer campaign Robert was directing. The beer spokesperson gig had a long successful run and had kept Jimmy flush for several years. With little in common, the men became unlikely friends. “So, where are we going?” Jimmy asked again.

“Wherever we can get in,” Robert grinned. “I’ll buy you a drink or two, even if we can’t have dinner. Let’s walk by Faneuil Hall, grab a couple of beers, and figure out a plan.”

There was an Enchanted Village in City Hall Plaza, where children stood in line to meet Santa. Nearby, carol singers gathered around the huge Christmas tree. Wearing white coats with tinsel-trimmed Christmas hats, they were singing “Silent Night” with more enthusiasm than skill. A girl whose cheeks matched the color of her red hair shook a plastic bucket under Robert’s and Jimmy’s noses. “Help the homeless!”

Jimmy laughed as he dropped a handful of coins into the bucket. “That’s me,” he said brightly.

“What?” Robert asked, unsure if Jimmy was joking or not.

“Technically, I’m homeless at the moment,” Jimmy said ruefully. “Angela is going to take the house from me.” They continued across Congress toward the water, walking into the boisterous crowd milling outside Faneuil Hall, and suddenly further speech was impossible. “Fill you in later,” Jimmy shouted. The noise in the outdoor marketplace was incredible. A brass band was playing something vaguely Christmassy, while the enormous crowd of chattering, laughing, and singing tourists stretched the length of the pedestrian-only cobblestone street, waiting to get into Cheers. Even though the show had been off the air since 1993, reruns ensured the bar never went out of fashion. Farther down the street, a fire-eater was juggling tinsel-wrapped flaming torches to roars of applause. The two men pushed their way back through the crowd and turned to the left, toward the North End.

“Even we’re too old for this noise,” Robert grinned.

“Speak for yourself, old man.”

“Okay, crazy idea.” Robert pointed to a quaint building up the street. “What about the Union Oyster House? Best oysters in town and six different Sam Adams varieties on tap,” he added.

“That’s me in then,” Jimmy smiled as the men crossed North Street.

“Too bad there’s no good Chinese nearby. Remember the place we used to always go in Chinatown?”

“Peach Farm, best dumplings I’ve ever had,” mused Jimmy as he patted his stomach again. “Can’t do that anymore. It’s bad for my stomach.”

“I thought you said it was an ulcer.”

“It was. Until I had the docs look at it.” Jimmy glanced sidelong at his friend. “Don’t look so alarmed. It’s nothing major. Okay, I admit it.... I’m getting old. There are certain foods I can no longer eat, and I’m afraid anything with MSG in it is out for me.”

“That’s too bad.” Robert shook his head. He had a lot of happy memories of the pair of them on location for the beer shoots, always looking for the Chinese or the Indian with the hottest curry on the menu. A little place on an Arlington back street still held the record.

“I’m finally paying for my lifetime of sins,” Jimmy said, then added, “but they were great sins, and I enjoyed every one of them.”

“Didn’t Oscar Wilde say something about sins? . . .”

“Ah, Oscar said something about everything. And most of it was utter shite.”

They walked up Union Street and turned into the Union Oyster House, going directly to the only empty seats at the bar. “Two Sam Adams Winter Lagers and two dozen oysters.” Robert gave the bartender his gold AmEx card to start the tab.

The bartender quickly brought two tall tumblers filled with the deep ruby-colored beer.

Jimmy raised his glass, and Robert raised his.

“You look good, Jimmy.”

“Aye, Robert. If bullshit was music, you’d be a brass band.”

Robert smiled as their glasses pinged together. “What’ll we drink to? That next year is better?”

Jimmy grinned ruefully. “Bollocks. That might be too much to ask for and is probably tempting fate. Let’s stick with the classic: to health and happiness. May they never clunk into each other and feck things up.”

“Health and happiness,” Robert agreed. He sipped the beer. It was bitter and sharp and as he swallowed, he realized he could still taste Stephanie’s flesh on his tongue. “You don’t sound too sure about next year?”

“I’m not.” Jimmy glanced sidelong at him. “This year has been a pisser. An absolute pisser. I’ll be glad to see the back of it.”

In the dim light of the bar, Robert saw that Jimmy looked old—more than old, he looked weary, beaten. There were bags under his eyes, and his normally spotless suit was shabby, with the evidence of an old stain on the lapel. The collar was dappled with dandruff.

“Again, I’m really sorry about Top of the Hub, I wanted to take you out in style,” Robert offered.

“Forget about it.”

“But I wanted . . .”

“Jayzus, relax. The rest of the world’s forgotten about Jimmy Moran, but you keep remembering me every Christmas. That’s plenty.”

“What are you talking about? You’re my lucky clover, Jimmy. If you hadn’t starred in our first Harpoon commercial, R&K would have never gotten off the ground.

“Jayzus, those were the days, weren’t they?” Jimmy mimicked hurling a harpoon into the water and thickened his brogue. “If you don’t have the luck of the Irish in getting women, have a Harpoon, and it just won’t matter.” He laughed. “Who wrote that bloody shite?”

“I did. And it was enough bloody shite for their revenue to go up. I could use that kind of inspiration again.”

“You get me all hot when you talk about advertising, Bobby. I could do with a gig.”

Robert smiled. “My brilliant copy and your scruffy mug sold a lot of beer.”

“That it did. I wonder why?”

“The accent helped.”

“Oh, everyone loves an Irish accent, especially in this town.”

“And you used to be good-looking,” Robert teased.

“That I was.” Jimmy’s face suddenly soured, the weight of the world bearing quickly down upon him. He took a long pull on the glass and swallowed hard. “Angela’s taking the house from me.”

“Shit. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not unless you can get Angela
not
to take the house from me.”

“I’m really sorry,” Robert said gently.

“What’s to be sorry about?” Jimmy sighed. “It’s my fault. I cheated for years and got away with it too. I was on borrowed time, and I was finally caught. Ye can’t blame Angela. I’ve been a feckin’ eeijet.” He downed his beer and signaled to the bartender for another one. “Remember I told you that Angela wouldn’t give me a divorce? Well, she’s changed her mind, or rather her very expensive lawyer has changed her mind for her. But she wants the house as part of the deal.”

“But the house is fabulous!”

Jimmy and Angela owned a stunning house in Quincy, right on the water. It was a colonial with twelve thousand square feet of private beach. Over the years, they had restored it with an extraordinary amount of love and too much money.

“Well, to be honest, I don’t get down there much anymore, so I’m resigned to letting it go.”

“You spent years fixing it up.”

“I know. But if that’s the cost of getting out of a loveless marriage, then that’s the price I’m prepared to pay.”

“That’s what you meant when you said you were homeless earlier?”

Jimmy nodded.

“But you have the place around the corner, in the North End?”

“For the moment, yes. Angela wants a bite of that too. I may end up paying her half its value.”

“But it must be worth what? Half a million?”

Jimmy smiled, showing startlingly white teeth. “Almost double that. Angela’s lawyers had it valued recently; two real estate agents estimated it at nine hundred thousand. Even with the recession. So, I’ll either have to pay Angela almost half a mill—which I can’t afford—or put it on the market and give her half of whatever I get.”

“Jesus, Jimmy, what a mess.”

Jimmy Moran finished the last of the drink in one quick swallow, then grimaced as it hit his stomach. “Of my own making, remember. I’ve always told you: Everything has a cost; you just have to be prepared to pay the price. Angela just got fed up with me screwing around and drinking. You can’t blame her.”

Robert couldn’t. Angela had put up with a lot. Events had come to a head three years ago when Jimmy’s long-running relationship with Frances, an up-and-coming actress many years his junior, had hit the headlines. The girl had been desperate for a part in a big-budget movie and had sold the story to one of the tabloids, hoping that the resultant publicity would help her get the job. It hadn’t, and Frances hadn’t really worked since. Surprisingly, Jimmy had continued the relationship with the actress, and she’d quickly become pregnant. Remarkably, the press had not yet got wind of the fact that Frances had borne Jimmy a son. Following her disastrous publicity stunt, she had disappeared completely from the public eye. Robert was one of the few people who knew that Jimmy had set her up in a quiet job at The Thoreau Institute at the Walden Woods Library.

“How is Frances?” he asked.

“Someone told Angela about the baby,” Jimmy continued, ignoring the question. “And Angela contacted me through her lawyer, said that if she’d known I had fathered a child she would have given me the divorce I wanted ages ago. No child deserved to be without a father, she said.” He shook his head at what was obviously a painful memory. “She’s bitter, very bitter indeed. She’ll take me for everything she can.”

“What are you going to do?” Robert asked.

Before Jimmy could answer, their oysters arrived, heaping plates of freshly opened oysters garnished with horseradish and lemons.

Jimmy shrugged. “I’ll divorce Angela—it’ll probably bankrupt me—and I’ll marry Frances, which will probably kill me. I’m fifty-two, far too old to be a first-time father. I’d be a lousy da.”

“Jesus, Jimmy, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say sorry, or congratulations.”

“Both, I s’ppose.”

The two men nibbled at the food without speaking. The noise level at the restaurant had increased appreciably.

“How are things with you?” Jimmy asked, arranging the empty shells in a neat circle on the bar.

“They’re okay. I’m struggling a bit. There’s not a lot of work out there. But I’ve been lucky recently.”

“And Kathy, how is she?”

“Good. She’s good. She’s busy with the Christmas preparations. I was talking to her earlier; she said she might drop in to see us at Top of the Hub.” He fished out his cell. “In fact, I really should let her know where we are. She might stop by if she’s close.” Also, it actually suited him to have her stop by now; at least then she’d get to see that he was genuinely out with a client. His screen said
No Network
. “I don’t have a signal. What about you?”