The Easy Way Out (45 page)

I climbed down off the steps and went to him and said hello.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said. “Nice night, isn't it? Out roaming around?”

I shrugged. “I suppose so. What about you?”

“I'm waiting for a friend to get out of the movie. Something I've already seen.”

He told me he had half an hour to kill. We walked through the crowds and turned down toward the river. We sat on the edge of a fountain behind the Kennedy School. Arthur took off his shoes and socks and stuck his feet into the cool water.

“Arthur,” I said, pointing to his feet, “that's so unlike you.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I hope you realize I'm a lot angrier with you than I'm letting on right now. The fact is, things are going reasonably well for me at the moment, so I'm in a generous mood. You'd be amazed how attractive you suddenly become to people as soon as they hear you've been left standing at the altar. You should try it sometime.”

“The friend at the movies?” I asked.

“Someone I work with.”

“Stewart,” I said, remembering the name from his conversation with Beatrice.

“That's right. Are you still at the apartment?”

I nodded. “With any luck, the economy won't turn around for a while and the house won't sell.”

“Enjoying all that space?”

I stuck my feet into the fountain beside his and admitted that I was.

“Lonely?” he asked.

“I suppose so.” I'd left the apartment precisely because the newly spacious rooms seemed too empty. “Not you, I gather.”

“No,” he said, “not really. I know what I want, Patrick, so it's not as if I have to spend a lot of time by myself trying to figure out a plan for the future.”

I could have asked him how things were going at the house, but I didn't want to bring up the subject. We sat at the fountain a little while longer, listening to the splashing of the water and the hum of traffic on Memorial Drive and the indistinct roar of a crowd on a playing field somewhere in the distance.

We walked back to the theater in silence. As I started to wander off, he put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I'm sure we'll be friends again sometime, Patrick, but let's not rush it, all right?”

Later that night, as I was biking along the path by the river, I saw him walking with his arm around a tall, gray-haired man. I couldn't make out their faces, and I'm certain they didn't see me, but as I sped past, I heard Arthur laughing.

*   *   *

Sitting in the phone booth in the lobby of the hotel, I longed to call him, perhaps because there really wasn't anyone I was closer to, no matter how distant we were now. But it was too soon to try and be friends. I missed him, but what I'd told Tony was true, too. I wasn't really sorry.

I left the phone booth and took the elevator to the top floor of the hotel. There was a swimming pool on the roof, enclosed under a high glass dome. The heat and the humidity and the intensity of the sunlight assaulted me as soon as I stepped into the bright greenhouse. I saw a bar at the far end of the pool, and I made my way there, crossing the slippery AstroTurf in my polished shoes. Two people were in the pool, a woman lying on a huge floating sponge and a man hanging on to the side, both inert, prostrate in the heat. I took off my jacket and put on a pair of sunglasses and ordered a glass of soda water.

Everything outside was baking under the sun: the housing and condo developments dotting the suburban landscape, the roads and cloverleafs, and the monolithic shopping mall across the highway, surrounded by the moat of the parking lot, with hundreds of cars shimmering in the sunlight, reflecting the glare back up into the white sky.

I'd had enough of the wedding, of the cake and the dancing couples and my poor forlorn brother. I couldn't face another minute of it. I stayed at the pool drinking water and staring out at the sweltering world, terrified and mesmerized by the sight of it, all that
harsh glass and steel and the strangely delicate glistening of the heat waves.

Late in the day, the sun began to turn orange as it dropped lower on the horizon. I stared off into the distance, past the shopping mall and the tangle of roads, to the hills south of Boston. A bank of dark clouds seemed to be rolling in. Somewhere out there, it was raining.

By the time I walked out of the hotel, the breeze had picked up and clouds had dimmed some of the sun's glare. The flags in front of the hotel were snapping in the wind. If anything, the heat was more oppressive than ever as the humidity built; but a storm was definitely moving in, a bank of dark clouds bringing with them violence and electricity and the promise of relief.

The author would like to thank the following for their assistance: the Writers' Room at the Massachusetts Artists' Foundation, Dorset Colony House, the Ragdale Foundation, and George Hodgman.