The Ferryman (16 page)

“Oh, yes. But you can find out for yourself at my birthday party tomorrow night.”

“I'll look forward to it,” David told her. “Then I can be all jealous and sulky that you're with the hot barely-out-of-college babe and I'm not even allowed to watch, never mind touch.”

Annette laughed and pointed at him. “See, there you go! That's the reaction I was expecting. Jealousy! Well, you've got a woman, mister, and a great one at that.”

“Point taken.” He shrugged with faux innocence. “Still, if you ever need someone to videotape ...”

She batted at his arm as they walked out of the classroom.

“So I guess I'm supposed to high-five you now,” he teased.

“You will when you meet her. Looks like we've both been lucky in love lately. It's about time.”

David thought of Janine and smiled, but with a bit of melancholy. He wished he could believe that things were really going to work out with Janine, but he dared not be so optimistic. She had retreated within herself after this latest blow, and he had been delicately attempting to get her to open up again since then. What Spencer Hahn had done to her, suing for custody of their dead child, was the cruelest thing he had ever heard of anybody doing to another short of violence.

Janine had broken his heart once already. David wanted to be cautious this time around. Or as cautious as he could be, considering how deeply he loved her.

“What's her name, anyway? This college girl?”

On the stairs, headed down to the double doors that led out to the faculty parking lot, Annette jabbed him in the ribs with a finger.

“She's not in college anymore, David. Don't make me have to hurt you.”

“It's envy,” he confessed.

Which was partly true. He loved Janine, true, and she was beautiful; there was no doubt about that. But he was a man, after all, and the idea of making love to a gorgeous twenty-two-year-old woman had its appeal. Of course, the idea of Annette making love to her had almost as much, perhaps even more. Not that David would dare say such a thing to Annette. He had guy wiring, simple as that. Those prurient thoughts were merely that, thoughts, and they did not undermine how deeply he felt his friendship with her.

Or, at least, not much. He tried to push the images in his head away, told himself to grow up.

“So what's her name?”

They pushed out through the double doors into the lot. It was warmer than it had been that morning, above sixty, and David slipped his jacket off, juggling his briefcase in order to do so.

Annette grinned happily. “Jill. Her name's Jill.”

“You can't even say her name without that cat-swallowed-the-canary smile,” he marveled. Then he lowered his voice. “Guess that answers my next question.”

“Guess it does,” Annette teased. “And just FYI? She was great.”

David let his head loll forward. “You're killing me, Elf.”

“I live for your torment.”

A sense of camaraderie filled David. It was a feeling he often had with Annette, yet he never allowed himself to forget how rare that was. As a child, he had wandered this city in a small tribe of boys and girls among whom he had almost always felt that almost indefinable sense of kinship. But as he grew older it had become a precious commodity. As an adult, he had that sense of comfort with his sister, Amy, and with Annette.

No one else.

Not even Janine.

Particularly not Janine, if he were honest about it. His love for her craved intimacy, but it also created a distance between them, a gap to be bridged only in time. He suspected it was that way in most relationships in the early going, tiptoeing around each other, not daring to reveal any flaw or blemish or even concern.True intimacy came only in time, if ever. Which made the risk he felt now with Janine all the greater. They had shared that sort of closeness once, and she had hurt him profoundly.

Yet here he was, risking that pain again.

Guy wiring.

Only about half the spaces in the lot were full. Several cars jockeyed for position for departure through the only exit like planes without an air-traffic controller. David and Annette walked across the faded gray pavement to her SAAB, which was parked under an oak tree whose leaves had begun to fill in early.

Something fluttered in the branches of the oak, and David looked up to find a pair of bluebirds busy at something in among the new greenery. From the other side of the building, out on the main road, he could hear the heavy, lumbering groan of a bus engine, and then the hydraulic whine of its brakes. A bus from the public high school, he presumed, delivering its teenage payload. All the buses from St. Matt's had left half an hour or more earlier.

Annette unlocked the SAAB and threw her bag over the seat into the back.

“So, seven o'clock tomorrow night?” David asked.

“If you want to eat anything, be on time,” she replied. “Jill's baking things for dessert, and I have no idea if she can cook.”

“Seven it is.”

He slung his jacket over his briefcase and used his free hand to dig in his pocket for his keys.

“You David Bairstow?”

A frown creasing across his forehead, David turned at the sound of the voice. Next to Annette's SAAB was a red Chevy Corsica with a dented rear fender that he thought belonged to one of the janitors. Behind the Chevy stood a man with shoulder-length blond hair and stubble on his chin. The stubble didn't make him look tough, though, not as well dressed as he was. The man wore a cotton shirt with an open collar and dark wool pants with sharp creases pressed in the legs and all about him was an air of hauteur and wealth.

Clearly, the Chevy didn't belong to
him
.

Annette climbed out of the car and glared over the open door at the newcomer. “What the hell do you want, Spencer?”

David stiffened. His hand slipped out of his pocket without retrieving his keys, and by instinct he switched both his briefcase and jacket to his left hand. This was the son of a bitch who had twisted Janine's life around, broken her heart more than once. Hell, this was the bastard who had stolen her away from him last time.

This was the guy who wanted to pay to have his baby's corpse dug up just out of spite.

Spencer gave them a wolfish grin. “Nice to see you, Annette. You look great.”

“Fuck you,” Annette snapped.

The words seemed to echo in the parking lot, but at the moment there was no one there to hear them. The first wave of departing teachers was gone, and no one else had come out yet.

Spencer's cell phone was clipped to his belt. It began to ring, an annoying, almost alien sound. One eyebrow shot up and he glanced down at the phone, obviously tempted to answer it. He didn't, and a tiny crack opened in the polished veneer that seemed to envelop the man. His appearance suggested the agonized preparation and purpose of a magazine advertising layout, but a ripple broke the surface of that strange, stylish bubble.

“Guess you spend enough time licking cunts, you start to act like one,” Spencer said. His voice had dropped an octave. It was insidious now. Dangerous.

Annette laughed. “Explains why
you're
such an asshole.”

But David wasn't laughing.

He dropped jacket and briefcase on the pavement, unmindful of where they might land, and strode around behind the Chevy. Spencer gave a shark's smile as he approached.

“You're the guy I came to see, anyway. Listen, we need to—”

David swung, hard. Spencer was fast. Fast enough to dodge the blow. But one punch was not what David had in mind, and he was already following it up with a left uppercut to the gut. Spencer grunted and began to double over. David caught him on the way down with a hard right jab that stung his knuckles but knocked the asshole back a step or two with a clack of teeth.

“You fuckin'—” Spencer sputtered.

David grabbed his arm, spun him around, and ratcheted the arm up high, and Spencer snarled in pain. The asshole swore again and tried to break the hold. Furious, David drove him facedown onto the trunk of the Corsica and held him there, pinned to the car.

“Apologize to Annette.”

“You are going to pay for this, Bairstow,” Spencer spat.

“What the fuck are you going to do?” David demanded. “Sue me?” He yanked up hard on Spencer's arm—any harder and he'd dislocate it—and the man actually cried out in agony.

“Apologize.”

“Sorry!” Spencer growled in pain and rage and disgust. “I'm sorry, okay?”

“A little courtesy,” David whispered. “That's all I'm asking.”

Then he let go, backing off quickly just in case Spencer decided it wasn't over yet. Slowly Spencer stood and brushed at his shirt where it had been dirtied against the car.

“That was a mistake, Bairstow.”

Even as Spencer said it, David knew it was true. The guy was a scumbag and what he had done to Janine was unforgivable. What he'd said to Annette ... you didn't just walk away from that kind of thing. So maybe violence was not the answer. Maybe hitting the guy had been a mistake. But David knew he would do it again.

“You want to file charges against me? Fine,” he snapped. “Sue me? Pretty much what I expect. See you then. For now, though, why don't you get the fuck out of here? Return that call you got.”

Spencer nodded slowly, no trace of amusement on his face. A small red welt had begun to form high on his cheek.

“I came here to say something to you,” he told David, without sparing even a glance at Annette.“I took her away from you once. I'll do it again. All you're doing now is wasting everybody's time. She doesn't love you, Bairstow. If she did, she'd never have come back to me the last time.”

“You arrogant, ignorant prick!” Annette shook her head in amazement. “You think after all this she wants you anything but gone? You used her, then left her pregnant. She almost died because of you. Losing that baby almost killed her, body and soul. Now you want to dig him up? You're not even human!”

With another slight nod, Spencer tossed back his too-long hair and puffed his chest up, as though the things Annette had said made him proud.

“Neither one of you really knows her. I do. It's never really been over between us, not since the first day we met on campus.” He glared at David again. “Just stay away from her. Make it easy on all of us.”

“You're insane,” David muttered.

Spencer shrugged. “I tried, that's all. Now we do it the hard way.”

Without another word he turned and strode confidently across the lot to a BMW convertible that was parked next to Sister Mary's Honda.

Side by side, David and Annette stood and watched him climb into the car and drive away. The cold rage within him turned brittle, and gave way to more heated emotions: grief and doubt, even hate. But there was a sense of satisfaction there as well.

He turned to Annette, all those feelings roiling within him.

She gazed at him fondly, slipped her arm through his, and laid her head on his shoulder.

“I wish I had that on videotape.”

 
Janine stared across the table at David, certain she had to have heard him wrong.

“You did what?”

He dropped his gaze. “I hit him.”

Gingerly she set her wineglass down on the creased tablecloth. Around them, the little Italian restaurant bustled with activity. Asagio, as it was called, had been recommended to her by a colleague at Medford High, and Janine had seized upon it as something new. She did not want her dates with David to keep taking them back to places that had meant something to them before. If things were to work between them, they would have to create a new relationship.

No more than a dozen small tables fit inside the cramped confines of Asagio. It reminded her of some of the tiny restaurants she had eaten in during a trip to New Orleans some years earlier. Pressed white tablecloths were draped over the tables, and each was topped with a burning candle and a fresh red rose in a small vase. The waiters were very Italian. In the North End of Boston, that was almost required.

In the late afternoon, the sky had turned gray. Now, as she gazed at David's strong, kind features and marveled that he had any capacity for violence at all, rain began to fall lightly outside, to patter the window not far from their table.

A waiter brought a basket of bread and set it between rose and candle.

“Are you ready to order?” he asked in accented English.

Janine blinked and glanced at him, but could not seem to summon a response.

“We need a few more minutes,” David replied.

The waiter nodded and went to clear a nearby table.

With a soft smile, Janine regarded this man whom she had known for so long, and yet perhaps not really known at all.

“You hit him?”

He nodded.

“Just once?”

Shamefaced, he shrugged. “A bunch of times, actually. Annette wanted to call you right away, but I told her to wait so I could tell you myself.”

It had been a hard couple of days. All of that bottled up inside her, she did the only thing she could do: Janine began to laugh. First it was a tiny thing, a chuckle in the back of her throat that she hid with a hand over her mouth. Then it erupted out of her in a howl of laughter and tears sprang to her eyes.

At first, David obviously had no idea how to handle that response. He glanced around at the other patrons and at the waiters, likely worried that they would think her a madwoman. Janine thought they might be right to think that, and cared not at all if they did.

But then David began to laugh as well, the laughter expanding like a balloon around them. After a minute or so, it started to deflate and Janine sighed happily.