The Duration (35 page)

I hit the gas and pushed the hearse until it slid forward and I had enough room to scrape the entire side of the Escalade on its chrome railings. It felt so good I did it again in reverse. A crowd came out of the funeral home and I gave zero fucks. I backed up and smacked the cruiser again, more forcefully, a 400-horsepower game of whack-a-mole, and then I was out, free, leaving more paint on the Datsun, and there was the lawn between me and St. Barneys, and I jumped the parking lot's curb and hit the gas, the dead grass turning to slurry under my tires. I cut a donut onto the lawn; we used to do that in the snowy parking lots in Chick's mom's Festiva, racing forward and pulling the e-brake and spinning in a wide arc while LL Cool J played
Mama Said Knock You Out
on the cassette deck. I guess there might have been some shouting somewhere behind me but I wasn't hearing it—I was doing the shouting now. An extended “Fuck!” sound, or something similarly enraged. A couple of months' worth of anger, frustration. Maybe it was more. I was carrying some shit around, be the first to admit it. But it doesn't change anything. Fuck all of this bullshit. I'm out. Done. And when the big day finally comes, when that last whistle blows and the corpses of the liars line up in parade, at least I won't be there. At least I'll know that.

I came out of my spin and then there was the bell tower, solid rock, right in front of me. I said, “What do you want to do?”—to the Escalade, I guess—and, you know, what do you expect a truck like that to say? It said storm the keep. It said make an impression. And I'd never heard a better idea. So we floored it, within the parameters of space and traction, and flew across the lawn and then the driveway that led to St. Barney's lot out in the back, and we aimed right for the corner of that bell tower, where the low foundation began to climb out of the gritty snowpack still piled up against it by January plows. And we hit that corner like a sock full of rocks at, I don't know, something fairly fast, maybe thirty or forty miles an hour, I don't really remember because it was a blur. And I didn't know until then that you could break your nose on an airbag, but you can, and I did, and the blood came out fast and thick all over the yoke of the bag and the white of my shirt and it was a second before I could get my bearings and try to back the Escalade up for another go, the bell tower being unscathed and, indeed, seemingly unimpressed. Like I gave a shit. Just you wait, bell tower. There's more coming your way. This baby's gonna start back up in a second.

But in that second, it was probably more than a second actually, the driver-side door swung open, and instead of a valet, which I'd sort of gotten used to, it was Chief Grevantz, with Unsie behind him, pulling me out onto the ground and then bending my arm behind my back on the wet walk. And when Grevantz lifted me up, cuffed this time, I could fully appreciate the crowd that had gathered around St. Barney's, two hundred people at least, a good showing, some crying more, some frowning. Moans and disapproval. The earnest man of God looked deeply concerned. I bequeath this to you, all you sons of bitches. A veritable New England jubilee. You're all welcome.

Chief Grevantz led me through the crowd toward his damaged cruiser, pretty roughly I must say. I must have looked like a monster, blood stained and wild-eyed, not so handsome this time, but I gathered my monster wits enough that as we passed Ms. J., I remembered the fish we'd emancipated from the abandoned mini-golf and how she was grateful to her anonymous benefactors and I said to her, shouted I guess, “It was us! Remember? It was us!”

She looked like she was about to cry, and even in my state I couldn't bear that.

So I looked away, and shouted “Captain America!,” just to keep us all off balance.

“What are we going to do with you?” said Judge Ralph when I saw him next, which was the Monday after Chick's funeral.

So now I'm hanging out here for a while, waiting for my probation to run. There's a sizeable restitution bill at the end of it, and a hearing before the Board of Bar Overseers in late June, at which I am professionally obligated to try and explain myself. I haven't seen Ava since the wake, and I don't think I'm likely to see her again. It's cool. There's probably a lot she'd have to get over to be able to look at me, if she even wanted to, and I'd feel bad taxing anyone like that. Unsie is putting me up because I'm required to be around a lot, checking in with various factions, and I'm learning a lot about kayaks at Asgard. How they differ from canoes, for example, and which ones you can fish in.

Jimmer's gone back to San Francisco, promising to return if needed. He's been really generous with his wealth and his time, but since he got Vishy Shetty out of the deal I feel like he should be thanking me. She went back with him, ostensibly because it was on the way to Mumbai but also because it let her check in with her considerable fan base in Silicon Valley. She apparently got the role in the Wharton pic but withdrew to be in an action movie about illegal street racing. Last I heard, Jimmer had started to look at some CAD factories in Hyderabad. He says that when the time is right, I should come out and see him. He'll hook me up.

And that is what I intend to do.

I have this theory about California, about its endless blue days and manifest destiny. Once we went out there, Kelly and me, to Santa Monica, and while she strolled around Montana Avenue and window-shopped with her rich aunt, I got a beer with her uncle, who was a talent manager and had grown up in Rhode Island. The place we were at was full of a certain kind of poor-looking rich person, jeans that cost more than my flight, and as we ate goat skewers and drank these filthy Belgian lambics, we talked in realistic masculine terms about the long-term prospects, or lack thereof, of my relationship with his niece. Would it include California? I wasn't sure—or, rather, I was, but I was playing my cards close—so I went with a bit about how weird it was for a New Englander to be in a place without seasons. How it unsettled me, and because it unsettled me it must unsettle everyone, at least subconsciously.

“I think that's why there is so much plastic surgery, so many nose jobs and fake boobs,” I said. “That's why everyone gets divorced in their forties, why this house over here looks nothing like the one next to it, why there are so many nice cars on lease. A lot of these people, they're totally focused on tomorrow. There's no reckoning. Nothing to bear. Tomorrow's gonna be great. Tomorrow's their day.”

Kelly's uncle looked at me with disbelief.

“Yeah,” he said, eventually. “That's exactly the point.”

So, right. California. Head out there, forget all this stuff. Call it amnesia and hope that it sticks.

Until then, I'm bombing around the Berkshires on a road bike leased at favorable terms from Asgard. The truck is pretty beat up, still in the shop, and I don't have money to waste getting it out, but the weather is good, though it rains for some stretch of nearly every day. People wave at me, even people who know about what happened. Sometimes they look a little wary, but it's late spring and folks seem willing to forgive. They're believers in redemption, or something. We're all in it together. I'm probably not the first one to go around the bend. So I wave back, and keep on pedaling. I'm sorry for everything. Sorry to everyone. The other day I went to St. Barney's and prayed.

Beyond that, I'm getting a lot of hill work in. Sometimes in the evening I ride up the curving road toward Richmond and stop at the overlook, stare down at Normanton Bowl, like that night in March when Chick fell asleep on the way back from the Heirloom, except that then the Bowl was frozen and now it's a blue plate in a green lawn. I count the boats. There's a lot of them, more each day. Nearby, a huge rock sticks out over the road, and years ago someone painted it to look like a shark. It's a rock shark. Nobody messes with it. The sun sinks low and sometimes I can see the moon come out over the eastern hills. Beneath me, the woods hum. I stand on the retaining wall and scan out as far as I can, past the Bowl and Fleur-de-Lys and Gable, but the hills always meet the sky no matter where I look. I went to the Midwest once, to a wedding on the edge of the plains outside of Chicago, a green summer day, the air humid and glowing. No hills on the horizon, just flatland that rolled out forever. It spooked the hell out of me.

I talk to Chickie a fair amount these days, when I'm asleep but when I'm awake too. Sometimes I don't even think he's gone. I didn't go to the funeral, being otherwise obliged, but I heard it was solid. His mom had him cremated and took his ashes back to Florida with her, which I'm sure he would have appreciated not at all. I'm sure he would have wanted to stay here. It's okay, though. It's like Jimmer was saying with graves and markers and cognitive ability or whatever. I know where to find Chick when I need him. Just last night, for example, he and I went Hill-to-Bowl, cruising down Main to Walker toward 183, he was ahead of me and the rough road was making our tires bounce and our cheeks vibrate. We turned off into the marshland by Stonover and the fireflies rose out of the night, blinking lazily in the heavy air, and the pavement got smooth and I caught up to him almost.

“Guy,” I called out into the space ahead of me. “That time at the quarry. Remember? With Shaunda and them?”

He cocked his head like he was waiting for the question.

I pumped my pedals and came up behind him.

“Were you really drowning?”

It was something I'd always wondered about. There were a whole lot of things I'd always wondered about.

I couldn't see Chick's face but I feel like he grinned. A turn or two later, he started laughing. Happily, quietly.

And then I was laughing too.

Laughing as if it mattered at all. What really happened. The actual truth!

This tumbling, star-crossed parish, this lurid slab, all the great beasts that swam beneath her swells and under the feet of her citizens. Mist and shadows. The ghosts of the natives. Things you felt but didn't know. Things you didn't know you knew until after. They all rose up around me and pushed me forward, pushed me along through the dark county, the road uncoiling, the white moon high, until I was just even with my friend.

Ben LeRoy, Ashley Myers, Tyrus Books, and F+W Media. Lauren Abramo at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. Jim Ruland. John Leary, Pia Ehrhardt, Ron Currie Jr., and Tom O'Keefe. Roy Kesey, Pasha Malla, Pamela Erens, Marc Strange, Mark Keats, Peter FitzGerald, Matt Tannenbaum, Ben Marlowe and Eileen Donovan Kranz. Kate McKean, Mark Weinstein, Alexis Hurley, Rhonda Hayes and Clyde Taylor. Bob Schneider. Pete, Chris, Tom and Ted. Jayme, Brian, Steve, Art and Setti. Missy, Sonja, Sonia and Nichole. Matt Lenehan. Joe Malossini. Turney Duff. Dotch, Keyes, Mullen, Weave, Richard, Kev, Ian and Pete A. Sheesh and the Deacon. David, Mary, John, Frederick, Katie (always), Matthew, Bridget and Timmy. Schermerhorn Park. The Millionaires. The Zoetrope writing community. Maryjane and Jerry Fromm. Katie, Rick, Trey, and Kai Shinholster. Leo, Eliza and Jenny.