| [ [_prev chapter<< _] ] | [ [_index_] ] | [ [_>>next chapter_] ] |
The copier groans and then beeps again, somehow even louder the first two dozen times. Jimmy squeezes further between the wall and the side of the machine, wrenching his arm to manually turn the rollers, his shirt-sleeve pushed up past his elbow. Another beep—right near his ear now.
“Is it okay?”
Jimmy clenches his teeth and twists his head to face back at Sally, Howard’s ever-diligent intern. “Not sure yet,” he grunts.
“It’s just that Mr. Hamlin didn’t make copies,” Sally says, peering down at him.
Jimmy nods. He reaches blindly for another panel and pops it open, feeling with his fingertips. So far just ribbons and wheels he’s sure he shouldn’t really be touching—and then his forefinger skims over the edge of a piece of paper. He presses his shoulder even further into the gap between the copier and the wall and strains until he manages to get a grip on the paper’s corner. And, knowing that somewhere Kim or a technician is grimacing, he just yanks at it, tugging it from between the rollers until it’s free.
He closes the panels and shimmies backwards again, and then he stands, holding out the document. His hand and forearm are covered in ink, as is Sally’s original: Howard’s writing now illegible, the yellow legal paper stained blue. “Sorry about that,” he says, keeping the page held out until Sally takes it from him.
“Uh, thanks,” Sally says, frowning at the notes.
“Tell Howard to use carbon paper next time if his notes are that important,” Jimmy says. He flexes the fingers of his ink-covered hand and then glances around the mailroom. Decorations adorn the walls: tinsel and paper garlands and the words Merry Christmas . The balloon letter ‘C’ has deflated and now hangs shriveled and small between the others.
Clara departs the mailroom after a drawn-out silence, and Jimmy watches her go. There’s nobody else down here: the others are all up delivering the last of the day’s mail to the few associates who remain in the office. Most of the HHM staff have already left at midday, off to whatever festivities they’ve got on for Christmas Eve.
So Jimmy heads upstairs to the first floor men’s room. It’s empty and cold, like they’ve already turned off the heat. He squirts soap into his palms and rinses them under the faucet, sending ribbons of swirling indigo water down the drain. It bubbles slowly, guttering.
Jimmy watches it for a long time.
The he shuts off the faucet. Catches himself in the mirror. There’s ink on his face too: a smudged line over the curve of his chin, and he wets a paper towel and wipes at it. Then wipes at it again, scrubbing harder and harder, little pieces of tissue catching on his afternoon stubble. He keeps rubbing until he’s sure the ink is gone, keeps rubbing and rubbing and then stops, breathing out through his nose.
He tosses the wadded-up paper towel into the bin, where it lands with a thud. Frowns at himself in the mirror. There’s still a pale mark on his chin after all, surrounded by red and angry skin.
Good enough.
He unrolls his shirtsleeves and buttons the cuffs. The fingers of his right hand are ink-stained even after being washed: blue-black, like a bruise. He curls them over the ceramic edge of the sink and breathes out slowly.
If only he had a pack of cigarettes. If only he’d taken the habit back up for real, instead of just sharing one with Kim a couple of times a week.
He runs a hand over his face, pinching his bottom lip between his forefinger and thumb and staring at his reflection. There’s slashes of blue ink up his white sleeve, lines from where the fabric had bunched around his elbow but is now spread out, the stripes inches apart. Like defensive wounds.
Jimmy lowers his hand. Shakes his head to shift his hair away from his eyes. Then he walks back down to the mailroom, passing a couple more people leaving for the holiday on his way. Bruce, who has reindeer antlers perched on his bald head, waves to him, and Jimmy raises a hand back.
The mailroom itself is empty, just as it had been earlier, before Clara had come in with those curled-ended notes of Howard’s and set them carelessly in the document feeder. The offending copy machine is still beeping, but Jimmy ignores it. He hops up onto one of the workstations and grabs a rubber-band ball, rolling it between his palms for a moment then leaning back on the tabletop.
He tosses it into the air, trying to get it as close to the ceiling as he can without it touching, without it hitting the square tiles and long fluorescent lights. With each throw, the ball lands cleanly back in his hand with a puck. He keeps time with the beeping of the broken copier.
Eventually, he hears the others come back. Jimmy lets the rubber band ball arrive in his palm with one more satisfying thump, and then he sits upright again, his feet dangling off the edge. Burt nods over in greeting, and Kim hands Henry a box of outgoing mail and then wheels her empty cart back to the station. She locks the back brakes in place but lingers for a moment, crouched beside the lower basket. She takes something small and white from the metal tray.
And then she comes over to him.
Jimmy gives her a small smile.
“Bit of a ghost town up there,” Kim says quietly. She stops in front of him, slightly off to the side. She’s holding something in her far hand. “Just the partners and some interns left.”
“Both ends of the food chain.”
“Yeah,” Kim says. The copier beeps. She folds her lips inwards and seems to study him for a moment, and then she holds out an envelope. It’s branded with the HHM logo. “This was in Howard’s out tray.”
Jimmy takes it. His name is printed on the front in clean letters: James McGill. The ink on the ‘J’ is smudged a little. Jimmy rubs a stained thumb over it—it’s dry now, at least—then looks back up at Kim. “Thanks.”
Kim just nods slowly. She reaches out as if to touch him, but she doesn’t. Instead, she pulls her hand back and moves away, pausing as she passes the broken copier to flick the power switch off at the wall. The beeping finally stops.
Jimmy stares down at the envelope again. He knows without needing to open it what’s inside: Howard’s promised rejection letter, no doubt filled with the same kind of hemming and hawing that had spilled from the man himself that night at the party. Jimmy runs a thumb along the seal idly—not breaking it, just testing the edge.
It doesn’t weigh much. Probably only a sheet or two of paper inside. He imagines sending it back to Howard unopened, but it’s hard to imagine that Howard would really care. It reminds Jimmy, strangely, of getting his report cards from school—of walking home at eight or nine years old with an envelope tucked in his jacket, an envelope he’d sneak into one of the storm drains on 49th Avenue instead of giving to his mother. A kind of formalized rejection he’s since done everything he can to avoid.
“Jimmy.”
Jimmy looks up.
It’s Chuck. Chuck in the mailroom, ever the sore thumb. He seems tired: his tie loosened, a stray lock of hair dangling over his forehead.
“I already got it, don’t worry,” Jimmy says, gesturing with envelope.
But Chuck doesn’t even seem to hear. “Something’s come up,” he says, and he frowns severely at his watch. “Mom’s arriving at four.” He looks back to Jimmy. “Can you pick her up?”
Jimmy freezes for a moment then says, “Uh—sure.”
“I’ve written down her flight number,” Chuck says, and he retrieves a business card from his jacket pocket.
Jimmy takes it from him. The numbers and letters of his mother’s flight are scrawled over the office address on the back. He folds it up with the envelope from Howard and slips them both into his pocket.
“Great,” Chuck says. “Thank you, Jimmy.” He looks around the mailroom, then tugs the sleeve of his shirt back down over his watch. “Just bring her straight to my place, will you?
Nodding, Jimmy agrees, but then he frowns. “I don’t have a key.”
“Right,” Chuck says. He pulls out a set and wrangles with them, finally slipping one off and handing it to Jimmy. “If Rebecca’s not back yet just—ah, let yourself in.”
“Sure,” Jimmy says, closing his palm around the key. “Is everything okay?”
Chuck exhales, and something close to a smile seems to pass over his lips. “We’re close to a breakthrough on Isaacson,” he says, and then he sighs. “Listen, Jimmy, I’ll see you tonight. And you remember there’s no gifts?”
“Of course, no gifts,” Jimmy repeats, shooting Chuck a thumbs up. He catches Kim in the background, her eyes trained on him, but he looks back to his brother.
Chuck nods once more and then leaves the mailroom, making a bee-line for the stairwell. His jacket is all creased up the back like he’s been sitting in one position for a very long time.
Jimmy watches the door to the stairwell swing behind his vanishing brother until it stills. He opens his hand and stares at the contents. Pulls out his own keyring and slips it on between his front door key and the spare one to his old Cutlass that he still carries around.
And then another key enters his vision: chunkier, with a black plastic grip. Held by a small, thin-fingered hand.
Jimmy follows the hand to an arm and then up to Kim’s face. He chuckles. “Okay, what’s the game?”
Kim shrugs, and then says simply, “Borrow my car.”
Jimmy gives another laugh, but then stills at the serious expression on her face. He glances up at the mailroom clock: coming up on three-thirty. Looks back to Kim. “You sure?”
“Of course,” she says, holding it closer to him.
“What’ll you do?” Jimmy asks.
“I’ll get the bus,” Kim says lightly. “It won’t kill me.”
Jimmy glances down at the key. “I can bring your car back after.”
But Kim shakes her head. “I’m not doing anything this weekend. Just drive it in on Monday morning.” She gives him a small smile. “Hang out with your mom, Jimmy.”
“Okay,” Jimmy says. There’s a long silence, and then he finally takes the key. “Thanks.”
“It can be a bit sticky getting into reverse,” she says.
“I know,” Jimmy says quietly. He slips the car key onto the ring with all his others, then tucks them in his pocket. “Oh!” He reaches into his back pocket for his wallet and cracks it open, then pulls out his bus ticket. “Here. Still got six rides left.”
Kim takes it from him. “Thanks.”
“Use as many as you like.”
“Sure,” she says. She turns to glance back at the clock, then adds, “You’d better get going. I’ll tell the others. I think we’re finishing up soon, anyway.”
“Thanks, Kim,” he says again, and she just smiles gently at him—the kind of small, open smile she’s only offered him a few times, and that he hasn’t seen since before the holiday party. He tries to smile back, but it feels dry and unnatural and he has to look away.
So he heads to the elevators and rides one down to the parking garage. Kim’s dark blue Ford Taurus is parked in her usual spot, near the landing. He remembers walking to it with her all those months ago, ready to quiz her on case law for her exam, or her review, or whatever it was that’d had her so stressed in those early weeks of their friendship.
Today, Jimmy stops beside it, hovering for a moment at the driver’s door before slipping the key into the lock and opening it. He settles into the front. Glances at the empty passenger seat beside him, and then he turns the key in the ignition, the car crackling into gear, Kim’s familiar music kicking to life on the stereo. He jams the gear box into reverse and starts to back out of the space—but he lifts his foot up off the clutch too quickly and the car stalls.
It takes him another couple of tries before he gets the feel for Kim’s car, but then he’s pulling away, climbing out of the parking building and onto the main road. He’s not even completely sure how to get to the airport from HHM, but he heads onto the freeway and follows his nose and eventually the airport signs. The traffic moves smoothly, and the sky is clear and bright blue right down to the horizon.
Albuquerque is small enough that it’s barely twenty minutes before the airport signs start prompting him to take the next exit. Jimmy shifts to the outer lane. His gaze flicks to his mirrors and then back to the road before him.
Something tugs at his navel, whispering to him in a small voice.
Another look to the distant exit ramp. Another to the vanishing road ahead.
He could keep going. The wheel is buzzing beneath his palms, the accelerator solid under the sole of his shoe. The freeway goes South. To the border. To Mexico. Or he could turn off, could go anywhere at all: to Santa Fe or Vegas or even Arno’s bar, where Merna would take one look at his face and silently slide him another Old Style, the bottle stopping perfectly before him. And he would buy some new cassettes on the way, too: Buzzcocks, Nine Inch Nails, Deep Purple. Something different.
And he would roll the window down and feel the snap of air on his skin.
But of course he takes the airport exit. He slows as he climbs the offramp to the overpass. Waits at the junction for the traffic to clear. And then he crosses the freeway, not thinking of the line of cars that continues beneath him, steady and fast.
Jimmy parks up in the closest lot to the airport and heads inside. Travelers are swarming in and out of the doors, and gathering around the check-in desk like moths. He pulls out Chuck’s business card from his pocket and checks his mother’s flight number against an arrivals board and then follows the signs to her gate. Just landed. He waits nearby with his hands in his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet.
In the corner of his eye is the bronze statue of a man, tipped forward at almost forty-five degrees, holding onto the tail of an eagle. Behind it, Jimmy can almost see the departures board, the names of cities burned yellow on black: New York and London and Chicago. And it strikes him that for the first time in his life he could afford to board one of the flights, if he really wanted to. Could use some of the money he’s been putting away for a car. Could race up to the check-in desk like in a movie—get me your cheapest flight out of here, leaving today!—and he could wake up tomorrow in another city. Another country.
People start spilling out of the arrivals gate, and Jimmy turns his attention back to it. Sluggish travelers, chattering teenagers, tired babies resting on the shoulders of their parents. A few business men and women, pulling grey cellphones from their briefcases as they walk, shoes squeaking over the linoleum.
And then his mother: short between the other passengers, her pale green sweater so familiar he’d swear she’s worn it every day for his entire life, the wool never fraying and the color never fading. “Jimmy,” she says as she reaches him, and she wraps him in a hug, rubbing her hand up and down over his back.
“Hey, Mom,” he murmurs.
“It’s good to see you,” she says into his shoulder, and then she releases him.
Jimmy lets go of her arms. “You, too,” he says. “Chuck had to work.”
“Ah well, he sent my other favorite son,” Ruth says lightly. She studies him in her sharp-eyed way. “You look tired.”
Jimmy gives a soft laugh. “I’m okay. Let’s go get your bag, huh?”
They head to the baggage claim. Even after all these months, the airport still hasn’t fixed the squeaking gear beneath the turning carousel, and the sound itches at the corner of Jimmy’s hearing as he talks idly to his mother—easygoing stuff: about how her flight went, about how well behaved the baby was in the row behind her. He nods along, hoping he’s doing a good enough job of listening, twitching his hands at his sides until he finally sees her bag emerge and he can grab it. He carries it out to the car, the air cool on his skin, his mother tucking her chin down into her scarf.
He unlocks the doors and hefts the suitcase into the trunk, then closes it with a snap and climbs into the driver’s side.
His mother gives him a look as she lowers herself into the passenger seat.
“I borrowed this from a friend,” Jimmy says, clicking on his belt.
“It’s a good car,” Ruth says. She pats the dash. “Solid.”
Jimmy chuckles. “I’ll let her know.” He turns the key in the ignition and wrestles the gearbox into reverse then backs out of the parking space. Music starts up on the stereo again and Jimmy turns it down—just slightly, just enough so it’s still humming in the background. The cars are backed up heading out of the airport parking lot, and Jimmy struggles with the machine for a while before it accepts his ticket—but then they’re out, pulling onto the freeway.
His mother is quiet, staring out the window to the slumbering line of frost-colored mountains. After a time, she points to them. “Coming to New Mexico, I always think I’m going to escape the snow and the cold.”
Jimmy nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, me too.”
The traffic seems busier heading into Albuquerque than out of it, people drawing closer to the city for the holiday. The woman on the car stereo sings, and Jimmy taps his thumb idly on the wheel as they cruise down the slow-moving freeway.
“So this friend with the car…” his mother says after a while, turning to face him. “Is this the same friend my AT&T bill told me so much about?”
Jimmy chuckles and darts a sideways glance to his mother. “Yeah, that’s her.”
“Do I get a name?” Ruth asks.
Jimmy peers up at the signs, looking for Chuck’s suburb. “Her name is Kim,” he says.
“Kim,” his mother repeats. “Like Kim Novak. Very pretty.”
“Hah,” Jimmy says, and then quieter: “Even prettier than Kim Novak.”
His mother makes a shocked noise, and he can almost feel her smiling. There’s a pause, and then she says, “Do you want to tell me more about her?”
Jimmy opens his mouth. Closes it. Taps his thumb on the wheel and watches the red brake lights before him. Stopping and starting with the traffic, off and on.
The song ends and the cassette clicks off. Side over.
“Uh, not right now, Mom,” Jimmy says, finally, into the silence. He sighs, and makes a show of looking up again at the freeway signs. “Don’t suppose you know how to get to Chuck’s house?”
His mother laughs slightly. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”
“San Cristobal, San Cristobal,” Jimmy murmurs to himself, crawling along the road, eyes scanning the signs for the approaching streets. He didn’t get too lost—only overshot the freeway exit by one—and now he’s in territory he remembers from his bus route. Eventually, he and his mother spot Chuck’s street at the same time, and he pulls into it.
There seem more people out and about than usual: walking along the sidewalk or busy with something on front lawns. As they round a corner, Jimmy sees a line of brown paper bags on the curb, spaced evenly. He lets out a little laugh—and then notices more along the other side of the street, and perched on the pillars of people’s gates and fences. Hundreds of them, all along the roadside.
“Okay, what’s going on?” he says, quickly glancing over at his mother.
She smiles at him. “You’ll see soon enough. I’m an old hat at this, you know.”
He raises his eyebrows and turns back to the road. “Okay…”
The garage door is already half open as they approach Chuck’s house. Jimmy pulls to a stop, and Rebecca emerges from beneath the roller, carrying a large plastic box. She nods her head to them in greeting, and Jimmy waves. He pops open his door and moves around to the trunk to get his mother’s suitcase and carries it up to meet Rebecca.
“You made it,” Rebecca says, shifting the box to her hip and giving him a one-armed hug. “Thank you. I’m sorry that Chuck couldn’t get ahold of me in time.”
“That’s okay,” Jimmy says, and he tucks his mother’s suitcase into the garage then straightens up. Across the street, a neighbor is lining up paper bags, and Jimmy frowns. “So what’s going on here?”
“Ruth didn’t tell you?” Rebecca says.
His mother gives a coy smile.
“Oh, you’re in for a treat, then,” Rebecca says. She gets Jimmy to pull the garage door shut, and then leads them round the front of the house, finally setting her box down on the concrete sidewalk beside another, even larger, one.
This one is open, and Jimmy peers inside it. It’s filled with sand. He looks back up at Rebecca.
She laughs lightly, and opens the other box. Inside are stacks of the same kind of brown paper bag as he’s seen all up their street, these ones a little rumpled at the corners, next to boxes of votive candles. “It’s nice to reuse them,” Rebecca says. “Otherwise it gets a little excessive.”
Jimmy makes a little questioning noise.
Rebecca’s faces softens. “They’re luminarias,” she says, turning to face the neighborhood. “It’s a tradition. We all light them at dusk. This is a real area for it, actually. A tour comes through here, goes right round the park.” She sweeps with her hand. “I’m running a little behind schedule this year, but I’m sure that with you two here we’ll be able to catch up.”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” his mother says, reaching for the stack of paper bags as if she knows exactly what she’s doing—which, Jimmy realizes, she probably does. There’s a pinch in his chest beneath his breastbone.
Rebecca lays a light hand on his elbow, and when he looks to her she shows him how to assemble one, scooping some sand into one of the sturdy paper bags and then nestling a candle in the middle of it. Jimmy follows along, slowly getting into the rhythm of the job, talking quietly to Rebecca and his mother. He fills bags, watching the coarse brown sand pile and settle at the bottom, until soon they have a whole line of them, and Jimmy starts distributing them evenly along the sidewalk, counting the distance between them with the lengths of his shoes.
He checks his watch. It’s going five o’clock, and some of the other residents have already started lighting their luminarias: pale orange dots on the other side of the park or down the opposite streets. And he can hear chattering, too: the neighbors on their lawns, or maybe people from elsewhere in the city, come to look at the lights.
He walks to and fro, fetching as many luminarias as he can from where his mother’s assembling them, and then setting them down on the sidewalk or backyard paths for Rebecca to come along behind him and light with a firelighter.
“How long do these last?” he asks her, as she dips the lighter into another bag and then straightens.
Rebecca smiles. “Longer than you’d think. Depends on the candles. Some of them might still be lit come morning.” She lights another candle with a crack of the gas igniting, then smiles to him. “I made you up a bed in Chuck’s study, I hope that’s okay.”
Jimmy stares at her.
“So you’ll have to peek your head out early. See how many are still going,” she says, and she stoops to light another candle. “And let me know.”
“Okay,” Jimmy says. He stands there for a moment and then catches himself, jolts himself back into movement. He measures out footsteps and places another luminaria. The paper rustles when he lets it go.
As night falls, the clear blue sky of earlier dims to a soft purple. Chuck arrives after dusk, just as they’re finishing up. He’s tidied his appearance since Jimmy saw him in the mailroom: his hair back in perfect place, his tie again a perfect Windsor.
That evening, after their Christmas Eve dinner, and after the tours have passed, the four of them sit in the park outside Chuck’s house, surrounded by the winking luminarias. It’s mythical, almost, the soft yellow lights shaping the curvature of the suburb, like a neon outline of a place.
Jimmy leans back against the park bench. Do all the candles make it warmer? he wonders, staring out at them as his mother and Chuck talk about Chuck’s new case, his brother’s voice uncharacteristically animated. So many tiny fires along the street. Giving the shape of it all, all the driveways and side streets and garden paths. They must warm it a little.
His breath mists before him, glowing orange.
Soon, his mother turns in, saying goodnight. Jimmy wishes her Merry Christmas and watches her vanish through the bright, square doorway of Chuck’s house, like the end of an old movie: the silhouette of a threshold. He watches as the lamp in the guest bedroom window switches off. Watches, too, the dark space that remains, as if he might still catch movement; or as if she might slip back to Cicero if he looks away.
And then Rebecca heads inside as well, kissing Chuck on the cheek and patting Jimmy on the shoulder—and it’s just him and his brother, surrounded by the flames.
The candles shift with the silence.
They look like the boats on the Lake Michigan at night, lights bobbing, moored along the shore.
They look like the tall buildings up State Street, up Michigan Avenue, with their thousands of square windows that would flick yellow as the city darkened, as the air chilled and the sidewalk iced over. And Jimmy had always felt amongst himself there, beneath those yellows lights, had always felt like a piece in some great machine, turning up and over and over and up.
And he stares at the luminarias now and they look like the lights of Albuquerque in the rearview mirror, driving up historic Route 66.
Jimmy doesn’t sleep well that night, curled on the sofa in Chuck’s study. The room is black and quiet. Somewhere, a clock ticks.
He had found Howard’s letter in his pocket again earlier, before he turned in, and he’d unfolded the envelope and stared at it for a few minutes. It’s still unopened now, lying on Chuck’s desk across the room. Invisible in the pitch darkness.
Out the window, he knows, the luminarias are extinguishing one by one.
He hears the others wake early on Christmas morning, just as the pale light of dawn starts to pick out the edges of the furniture in the room. He doesn’t remember sleeping at all, but he must have, some snatched moments between lying there, feeling like he should be doing something, should be going somewhere, should be tearing something apart and walking away from the pieces.
Jimmy doesn’t drink that day, even though Rebecca boasts another bottle of expensive Italian wine from her and Chuck’s travels. He watches it pour redly into the others’ glasses and grips his water tighter. Shovels his mouth full of turkey and stuffing and potatoes—all more traditional this time, to his mother’s unspoken but evident delight.
Later, they watch Jimmy Stewart movies: It’s a Wonderful Life and then The Shop Around the Corner. His namesake, his mother had said once, and he’s never known if she was joking or not—for Chuck to have been named after their father, and him the gangly Capra everyman. Hepburn’s second choice.
They play scrabble around the dining table in the evening. His mother is much better at it than any of the rest of them, and Jimmy’s too tired to concentrate, the square yellow letters swimming on the game board. He picks at a plate of leftovers, but he’s too full from lunch, and sluggish. After a while, staring at the jumble of incomprehensible letters, he bows out, pushing his chair back, taking the others’ plates to the kitchen and then heading up to Chuck’s study.
He looks at the foldout bed, still unmade from his restless night. At the lines of law books along the shelves: spines blue and brown and indistinguishable. At the old diplomas framed on Chuck’s wall; at the photographs of his brother beside the seal for the Delaware Court of Chancery or outside an enormous, columned courthouse in Colorado.
There’s one of Chuck and their father. Chuck’s in a patterned sweater, smiling near the old diner on 49th. Jimmy’s never seen the picture before. He leans closer. There’s a garland in the window, and he can see snow in the gutters. It must have been taken when Chuck stayed with them over the holidays before he got his first clerkship. A few long weeks that Jimmy had hated, then, avoiding the house at all costs, eighteen and angry and unwilling to be around his perfect brother for more than five seconds, and he remembers it now like acid at the back of his throat because that was the last time—
Nobody took any photos the next Christmas.
The envelope from Howard is still on the desk. Jimmy picks it up again. Turns it over. He slips his thumb beneath the seal and then stops. Squeezes his eyes tight. He hears someone moving in the hallway outside the study, soft footed, shuffling to another room.
He opens his eyes. The letter is like a weight in his hand, and he slips it carefully between the fading spines of Chuck’s books, to be lost in the enormity of them all.
Only Chuck is downstairs when Jimmy descends. He’s reclined in an armchair, a newspaper open before him. He looks up when Jimmy enters. “Mom headed up to her room,” he says. “I think she’s still feeling a bit worn down.”
Jimmy nods. “It was a nice day, though.” He moves to the window and looks out. The paper bags of the luminarias still line the streets, unlit. He hears Chuck rise from his chair and move around the living room slowly for a few minutes, then approach Jimmy’s side.
Across the road, an old woman picks up her brown paper bags, slowly emptying them of sand.
“Do we need to get ours in?” Jimmy asks.
“Tomorrow will be fine,” Chuck says.
Jimmy sighs. He looks at his watch. It’s barely gone six o’clock, but it feels much later. He can feel tiredness dragging on him like a weight. He looks back to the old woman, hunched over her line of empty bags. “I think I’ll sleep at mine tonight,” he says, following the woman with his eyes. “Change my clothes. Come back to see Mom tomorrow. Will you tell her?”
But there’s only silence from beside him.
Jimmy tears his gaze away from the window and looks to his brother. Chuck is staring at him strangely, a brown parcel in his hands, and for a moment Jimmy thinks it’s another luminaria, but it’s not. It’s rectangular and heavy-looking and so obviously a book that part of Jimmy wants to crack a joke—something well-trodden about his brother and encyclopedias. But as he stares at it, Chuck holds it out further and Jimmy, mutely, takes it. He looks back up at his brother.
Chuck opens his mouth. His brow furrows, and his lips twitch as if they’re stuck on something, as if they’re struggling against something—and then he turns, walking away. He vanishes around the corner of the kitchen, his dressing gown dipping into the shadows.
Jimmy watches the empty place for a long time, the book clasped in his hands.
Jimmy doesn’t see her right away. He pulls into a parking space outside his apartment, his eyes heavy, the car buzzing beneath him, the stereo silent. The engine stills as he shuts it off, falling to quietness, too.
The present from Chuck is on the passenger seat. Jimmy reaches across and picks it up again. Turns it over in his hands, feeling the thick brown paper. He closes his eyes and exhales, then nods. Tucks the book under his arm and opens the car door, stepping out into the courtyard. Tall lamps bathe the complex in orange.
And that’s when he finally does see her: leaning against the brown wall beside his door, smoke rising past her and twisting beneath the outdoor lights. She tips her head to him in greeting.
Jimmy walks up slowly.
“Hey,” Kim says softly.
“Hey,” he says. “Merry Christmas.”
Kim smiles. “Merry Christmas.”
Jimmy looks down at the cigarette clasped between her pink fingers. Her nose is pink, too, and her eyes are so blue he has to look away. “You come to collect?” he says, nodding at the car. “Gonna break my legs?”
Kim chuckles. “I figured you probably wouldn’t be home, you know,” she says. “But…” She shrugs. “Well, I just started walking down Lomas and then before I knew it I was running out of street.”
“Jesus,” Jimmy murmurs. “How long did that take?”
Kim shrugs. “Depends. What time is it now?”
Jimmy looks at his watch. “Six-thirty.”
“About two hours, then,” Kim says mildly.
He studies her carefully. Strands of blonde hair sweep across her face, almost invisible. “You okay?” he murmurs.
Kim nods, looking out away from him, looking out toward the Sandias. “I’m good,” she says, eventually. “You?”
“Yeah,” Jimmy says. They stand silent in the cold. The book from Chuck is heavy under his arm.
Kim drags on the cigarette and holds it, then exhales smoke beneath the guttering sodium lights. Her chest rises and falls. Her eyes shift to his. Her voice, when it comes, is quiet: “Do I need to apologize for something?”
Jimmy stares at her. He can feel another question floating in the air between them: his own, still unanswered. But he shrugs. “No.”
Kim seems to examine him carefully.
“Do I?” he asks finally, tone edged with something wary and blackened.
She shrugs, too. “No.”
“Okay.”
Kim takes another drag and then breathes out, slowly and carefully, as careful as her next words: “I missed you.”
Jimmy gives a small laugh. “I saw you yesterday.”
“Really?” she says, eyes sparkling. “It’s been that long, huh?”
He still doesn’t say it. The words hang there like paper lanterns.
And, ignoring them, he silently opens his door, and lets her in.
But Jimmy finds that for all of it he still can’t sleep.
The sheets are damp on his side of the bed, and he lies on them, his eyes wide open, staring into the darkness of his bedroom wall with Kim’s arm slung over his waist. The only sound in the room is her breathing, in and out behind his head. Not even the usual traffic from the busy road nearby. Just the waves of Kim’s breath. He can still feel her fingers on his skin, her nails in his hair, can still taste her on his breath.
He lifts her arm and slides out slowly from under it, moving inch by inch, trying not to rock the bed. She doesn’t seem to wake up. He slips on his boxers and moves to the kitchen then pours a glass of water at the sink. Drinks it slowly. In the half light from the streetlamps outside, he can see the square parcel from Chuck on his tiny kitchen table, lying beside the little cactus Kim gave him as a housewarming gift all that time ago.
Jimmy reaches for the book, picking it up slowly and taking it with him to the bathroom. He flicks on the light and starts to close the door, and then stops, looking out through the threshold. Kim’s asleep with her mouth open, twisted toward his side of the bed, her arm stretched over the empty place where he used to be. If he were still there, the line of shadow from the bathroom light would fall almost directly between them. It illuminates only Kim's outstretched arm and the top of her head, the ends of her splayed hair that seem to reach for him, too.
He closes the bathroom door. Lowers the lid of the toilet and sits on it, the ceramic cold on his bare thighs beneath the edge of his boxers. He holds the wrapped book with both hands. The thick brown paper is matte and unceremonious and perfect.
A long time passes before he cracks a nail through the wrapping. He tears the paper along the edge then peels it off, revealing first shining gold-leafed pages and then bright blue leather. Pressed into the leather is an illustration of an enormous sailing ship, and Jimmy pulls the rest of the paper off then flips the book over to the front. Swords and guns and castles decorate the title: The Count of Monte Cristo.
Jimmy frowns and opens it, and a folded sheet of yellow paper falls to the floor between his bare feet. He bends down to pick it up. Unfolds it.
Dear Jimmy, it reads. I hope you remember this as fondly as I do.
And there’s no name, but he doesn’t need one. He turns the paper over—nothing else on the back. Just those words, those—and he counts them—twelve words.
Dear Jimmy, he mouths, his eyes narrowing. I hope you remember this as fondly as I do.
Jimmy flicks through the book, the text small and dense and dark on the page. He looks at the front cover again, then at the sailing ship on the back, then at the swordfighting men pressed with gold on the book’s spine. He scans through the pages, looking for familiar characters, finding nothing, finding only long French names with accented letters that he’s not even sure he’d know how to say.
Dear Jimmy. I hope you remember this as fondly as I do.
Something starts catching in him, like firelighter snapping, gasless, trying to ignite—and he keep looking, turning page after page, then back to the beginning—nothing—and then over from the top again, his fingers unsteady, thumbs shaking as he leafs through—and then to the inside cover, where he finally finds two more words: Christmas, 1992.
The familiar curling ‘C’ and the looping ‘s’s of his brother’s handwriting seem almost to rise off the page, to swim before him in the haze of tiredness and candle smoke, and he stares at them for a long time, tracing them with his eyes until they’re burned into his retinas, until when he flicks through the book again he can’t even make out what it says, just the white-black rush of pages, and the fourteen words in his mind:
Dear Jimmy. I hope you remember this as fondly as I do. Christmas, 1992.
And whatever it is that’s been clicking and sparking finally catches, and Jimmy feels it rushing up through him, and he digs his fingers into the leatherbound book, and something breaks, bright in his chest, like a glass shattering, like pinpricks in his eyes—
—like a teenaged Chuck smiling down at Jimmy as they sat together cross-legged on the carpet before their old fireplace, listening and nodding and then saying, “Huh, Jimmy. I never heard that one. D’you wanna tell me it again?”
| [ [_prev chapter<< _] ] | [ [_index_] ] | [ [_>>next chapter_] ] |