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The phone rings against Jimmy’s ear, the line warm and crackling. Golden sun cuts into the shade of his front step from low above the opposite apartments. A curling cable winds from the handset to the cradle on the floor just inside, and a wire snakes from the cradle back to the wall in his bedroom. It’s just long enough to reach.
Jimmy sips his beer, ice-cold and bubbly on his tongue. He rubs his thumb over the Shiner Bock label as the phone line continues to ring, as the sound of the evening news from someone’s open window drifts in and out of audibility.
Another sip, then the phone clicks, and he swallows fast, grinning. “Hey, Mom!” he says. “Happy Birthday!”
She chuckles. “Hey yourself, honey.”
Jimmy sets his beer back down next to his foot on the lower step. “How’s the big seven-five?”
Another quiet laugh. “Still waiting to learn the secrets of the universe.”
“Ah, well,” Jimmy says. “Give it time.” He moves sideways along the step, catching more of the angular sun. He rolls his neck as the warmth hits. “Good day?”
“Hmm, so-so,” she says wryly, and then after a moment: “It was very nice. I had lunch at the Pearl with Lily and the girls.”
He smiles. “Cobb salad, hold the eggs?”
Another chuckle. “Well, of course.”
A black jeep pulls into the parking lot, its engine a low rumble. One of Jimmy’s neighbors gets out. He’s an older guy, always around a lot, and he helps his little boy down out of the passenger seat. He lifts a hand to Jimmy as they pass. Jimmy nods back.
“It hasn’t stopped raining this week,” Ruth says, and she sighs. “Good for the garden, I guess. Delilah’s been sleeping under the back porch and coming back in covered in dirt.”
Jimmy smiles. He curls the phone cord around his hand. “You talk to Chuck yet today?”
A hum of agreement. “He called this morning,” she adds, then she gives another sigh. “Those partners leave too much on his plate.” And now he can almost hear her shaking her head. “I told him to take a weekend off before it kills him.”
Jimmy tries to remember if he’s seen his brother recently—nothing comes to mind, but HHM has been buzzing recently, associates flitting in and out of the mailroom with each turn of the minute hand, each job more important than the next.
“And how have you been?” Ruth says softly.
Jimmy nods. “Good, yeah, really good.” He grins, stretching back on the steps, feeling his bones click and muscles relax. The sky is blue turning to gold. “No rain here.”
Ruth sighs. “Enjoy the sunshine for me.”
“I will,” he murmurs. He has another sip of beer. The trees along one edge of the parking lot are coming back into their leaves; they cast long evening shadows over the cement, rippling.
His mother’s said something.
“Hm?”
“Anyone you’ve been enjoying it with?” she says, and then she adds: “The sunshine.”
He chuckles. “No, not right now.”
She lets out a mock little gasp. “Not like you,” she says. “What happened to, what was her name, prettier-than-Kim-Novak?”
Jimmy laughs brightly. “We’re just friends, Mom.” He lowers the bottle to the concrete step again, then scratches his knee, waiting for his mother to fill the silence again. When she doesn’t, he sighs. “We kinda messed that one up, actually.”
There’s a pause. “She didn’t—”
“Mom,” he says quickly. “It was just timing.” And in explaining to his mother, in trying not to sound like a kid, he surprises himself at how easy the words come. “We tried, but we were both really busy, you know?”
And Ruth says mildly, “They’re working you that hard in the mailroom?”
Jimmy chuckles. “She’s a proper lawyer now, Mom. She’s up there with the big kids—hell, better than them, even. I think she probably beat Chuck on the bar exam, you know.”
She laughs warmly. “You almost sounds like you’re the one who did.”
He grins. “Well, I helped. A little.” And then a deep-throated laugh. “Okay, maybe she just let me feel like I was helping, I don’t know.” He shifts, adjusting his grip on the phone. “Anyway, she’s not in the mailroom anymore.”
There’s thoughtful noise from his mother, a little musical hum. She says, “But you’re still doing all right there?”
“Well, yeah,” Jimmy says, and then he smiles again. “It’s good, I’m doing good, Mom.”
“Okay, good.”
The sun flickers over the opposite roofs. The soft glow along the lower edge of the sky is spreading upward now, a swell of yellow that’s growing and growing in that wide Albuquerque way. He says, “I’ll come up and see you again sometime, okay? We can celebrate your big seven-five properly. No Cobb salad.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, we can do way better than that,” he says. He uses the neck of the beer bottle to roll it slowly around on its base, like a coin settling. “I’ve just been…well, I’ve been busy.”
There’s a silence, then a rustle of fabric. “It’s good to be busy.”
He thinks of his completed LSAT papers somewhere out there in the city, waiting to be graded. He thinks of his law school applications, dozens of them, letters that Kim helped him send out months ago, each stuffed with a personal essay and his transcript and a doe-eyed note telling the admissions officer that he’s re-sitting the LSAT in February, telling them to wait for his updated score.
All those letters out there, somewhere, waiting.
And in the crackling silence of the phone and the warm evening sun, Jimmy thinks it sounds like good odds.
He finishes his beer and sets down the empty bottle. He runs his fingers over his mouth. “So, I’ll be seeing you soon, okay?”
His mother’s voice is soft in his ear: “Course, hon.”
He smiles again. They talk for a while longer, just easy going things, Saturday afternoon things that float down the thousand miles between them as the sun finally dips beneath the rooftops, and the sky turns indigo and gold.
“What’s the holdup?”
Jimmy slows. He breathes out once, deliberately, then stands up from where he’s bent over the copier, a hand pressed into the small of his back. He feels like he’s twice his age today, some creaking structure of bones and wood. It’s mid-afternoon, and he hasn’t had a break. There’s a biblical collection of associates and assistants waiting around him—John and Matthew and Trina and now, bald head and upper lip coated in a thin sheen of sweat, here’s Carl Vernon, the cherry on top.
Vernon raises his eyebrows and narrows his lips.
“This is broken,” Jimmy says coolly. “You’ll have to get in the line.”
“Line?” Vernon says. He doesn’t follow it up with anything, just stands there with his eyebrows crawling further and further up toward his scalp.
Jimmy breathes out and shakes his head. He goes back to struggling with the machine, the one that’s crapped out again already even though the technician came by yesterday afternoon and said he’d fixed it. Jimmy can feel sweat prickling on the back of his neck—it’s hotter in the mailroom than usual, all the extra bodies and machines working overtime. The place feels closer than ever to the kind of mailroom he’d first imagined on the plane to Albuquerque: more of an engine room, a dark and frantic basement. He flicks a panel closed on the copier and presses a button. It does nothing.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Vernon says. When Jimmy looks up, he’s already walking away, brushing past another associate who’s just arrived, swinging off through the stairwell door.
Jimmy chuckles and swipes his hair back from his forehead, then he looks to the others. “What is going on today?”
Matthew, a mild-mannered assistant in small rectangular glasses, gives a bony-shouldered shrug. He says, “Perfect storm?”
“Hurricane Hamlin,” Trina offers.
Jimmy unconsciously wipes his hands over the front of his slacks and then looks down to see streaks of ink over the fabric, like a child’s finger-painting. He huffs, shaking his head, but he glances back to Trina. “Hamlin?”
“Senior,” Matthew says. “Keeps bringing in new cases linked to that Bosco fiasco, and we don’t have enough people here to keep up.”
Jimmy tries to wedge his fingernail under a stubborn switch inside the copier and bites his lip. It won’t budge. “You’re telling me,” he mutters.
After a minute, and some unknowable change that had nothing to do with Jimmy, the copier whirs to life again, spitting out paper in a mocking sort of hello. He exhales and gets back to it, feeding documents again and again into the machine.
The line of people doesn’t let up until early evening. Jimmy feels like he’s trying to stop a sinking ship, bailing out sheet after sheet of white paper into the hands of waiting associates, only for more to emerge from each copier. It feels like he hasn’t made any headway at all, until eventually, almost all at once, the dam breaks.
He looks around and the room is almost empty, just Burt losing his temper at one of the computer workstations, and Ernie printing page upon page of something else.
So, as Jimmy finally gets time to sort through the afternoon deliveries, the sun’s already gone from the high windows of the basement and the sky is already darkening. He rifles through the parcels on autopilot, dividing them into their plastic bins with echoing thuds, and then he moves on to the letters.
His letter is the third one in the pile.
It’s achingly familiar from last time, the LSAC logo in the top corner, and his own name glinting up through the plastic window: Mr. James M. McGill.
He stills. Breathes out slowly, channeling the air through pursed lips. Okay. He presses his forefinger to his mouth, steadying his hand, and then looks out into the mailroom. Ernie passes with a cartful of binders and stuffed-to-bursting Manila folders.
Jimmy jogs over. “Hey, Ernie!” he says, and he lays a hand on the cart. “Hey. You going up to two?”
Ernie blinks, like Jimmy’s jolted him back to reality from somewhere. It takes a moment before he nods and says, “Yeah—up to two, yeah.”
Jimmy keeps his hand on the cart. “I got it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, man,” Jimmy says, nodding quickly.
“Uh, thanks, Jimmy,” Ernie says, smiling and letting go of the cart.
Jimmy just nods again. He wheels the squeaking cart over to the bank of elevators and thumbs the call button and hovers there on the balls of his feet. He can feel the letter from the LSAC in his back pocket like a brand, spurring him to move, move.
The elevator ride up to the second floor of HHM feels even slower than usual, like time is winding down. He can hear his heart in his chest, beating and beating as if it’s one of the mechanisms turning somewhere above the elevator, thudding quickly over and over as they wind higher.
When the doors finally open, he shoots out so fast he almost knocks over Clara with his mailcart. She calls his name, and he just throws out a harried apology, weaving around the gathered assistants along the second floor halls as he passes a breakroom and the door to the bathrooms.
But her cubicle is empty.
He parks the mailcart next to her desk and exhales, catching his breath. Peers over into the neighboring space, and says, “Hey Jack—uh, no Kim?”
Jack, blond and straight-backed in a well-cut suit, doesn’t look up from his blue-screened computer. He just shakes his head.
Jimmy studies Kim’s desktop calendar. There’s a note on today’s square, March 12th, but he doesn’t know what L+D means. He peers back over at Jack. “D’you know where she is?”
With a sharp exhales through his nose, Jack finally turns around. “Just leave whatever it is in her tray, Jimmy, she’ll get it.”
Jimmy glances at the clock—it’s coming up on five o’clock. “So you don’t know where Kim is?”
Another sigh from Jack. “Hamlin sent her to Reeves and Green to pick up the deposition files those guys were supposed to courier over yesterday.”
“Reeves and Green?” Jimmy repeats. He taps his hand on the mailcart. “Do you know when she’ll be back?”
Jack shrugs again. “Depends how friendly they’re feeling today, I guess.”
Jimmy looks to the darkening windows. “Are they across town?”
“Who are you, UPS?” Jack says, and he turns back to his computer again. “Just leave it in her tray, Jimmy, I’ll make sure she gets it.” He types a few letters with his forefingers on the black keyboard, then he reaches for a sheet of paper from a nearby neat pile. He holds it out to Jimmy without looking around, and says, “Can you bring me ten of these? I need them by five thirty.”
Jimmy huffs. He leans over the cubicle wall to snag the paper from Jack’s hand. “No problem,” he mutters, “thanks so much for all your help.” He stuffs the sheet into the side of the mailcart then wheels the cart off again, tossing heavy Manila folders and stacks of printing into people’s in-trays without exchanging more than a quick greeting for once—not that anybody else looks ready to talk, either, as he overhears snatches of frantic telephone conversations, or passes associates sweating over towering stacks of paper.
He doesn’t finish downstairs until after seven, waving off Henry and Burt and Ernie as he works his way through the final stack of photocopying for the day.
Without them, the mailroom is finally, blissfully, quiet. Where earlier he’d been endlessly bailing water it’s now a steady trickle, just sheet after unhurried sheet emerging from the industrial machine as Jimmy watches over everything and tries not to think about the letter waiting in his pocket.
He could just open it now. He could pull it out and open the letter and then he’d know. One way or the other, higher or lower, better than last time or worse.
But of course he can’t.
He goes up to the second floor again before he leaves. Her cubicle is still empty. Blond-haired Jack is gone now, too, and so are most of the other associates. There’s only a couple of people still bent over their desks, and the expanse of cubicles is a patchwork of light and darkness as some sections of the overheads are switched off for the day and others aren’t.
So Jimmy rides the bus back to his place with the letter tucked into the front pocket of his backpack. It’s later than he usually leaves, and the bus is quieter than usual. The bus flashes past darkened streets and lit-up restaurants, past empty bus stop after empty bus stop. And, with the thinner traffic of night, Jimmy’s walking from his own stop to his apartment sooner than he expected, crossing his complex’s parking lot and climbing the couple of steps to his front door.
He stands there in the cool evening, his keys in his hand. He can hear the splashing of someone in the complex’s pool, out of sight. The glow of the poolside lights spills onto a neighbor’s wall.
He could call her, he thinks. He could just call her—go inside and pick up the phone, like he did last time, and read out his score and listen to the breath of her reaction.
But he doesn’t call her. He walks back to the bus stop and crosses the street and waits until the night bus rumbles up. He rides it back past the flashing buildings and the bright restaurants, back past the empty bus stops and dark side streets. And, as he approaches her stop, he stands up early, keeping his balance in the aisle and gripping the pole beside the back exit—until the doors open with a hiss, and he bounds down, landing heavily on the sidewalk.
He turns right into her street, and then left into her apartment complex. He climbs the yellow-lit steps up to the second level of her building, and walks around the balcony, passing the striped lights of neighboring windows, the chatter of people talking within—
—all as if he doesn’t remember exactly when he was last here.
He stops at her door. He could still go back home and call her. She wouldn’t know. He glances at the wall to the right of the front door. Looks away.
And knocks on the door.
The knock comes out weaker than he’d hoped, and he wishes he could try again, rap on the wood firmly with his knuckles. But he just lowers his hand.
When the door swings open, it’s not Kim, it’s her roommate, Ellen—short and intense. Her eyebrows rise and she says, “You.”
“Me,” Jimmy says, and then, with a shit-eating smile, “Hi, Ellen.”
Ellen gives an exaggerated sigh, but then she laughs softly. “Hi, Jimmy.”
Jimmy waits another moment, then clears his throat and adds, “Is Kim home?”
“For once?” Ellen says, and then her face darkens. “Those bastard bosses always keep her there until midnight. Isn’t one of them your brother?”
“One of them, yeah,” Jimmy says, and he frowns. “She’s not here?”
A sigh. “No, she’s here.”
Jimmy tries to look past Ellen into the apartment. “So, can I come in, then?”
And Ellen just steps back, gesturing over to the living room where Kim has her head down over a stack of papers, yellow highlighter in her hand. She doesn’t seem to have noticed anything at all.
He takes a few steps inside, into the kitchen area, and Ellen slinks off into her room. She closes her door with a loud snap.
And the door slamming finally gets Kim’s attention. She looks up, gaze skimming over Jimmy to Ellen’s room, then her eyes cut back to him. She blinks. “Jimmy?”
“Hey,” he says, rooted there.
“Hey,” she echoes, and she smiles.
“Managed to get past your guard at the portcullis,” he says, jerking his head toward Ellen’s room.
Kim chuckles, looking at the door again, too. Then back to Jimmy. Her smile falls slowly, and her brows pinch together. “Jimmy, is everything okay?”
He slides his backpack off his shoulder and lowers it to the carpet. Bends down and unzips the front pocket, then pulls out the letter from the LSAC. Holds it out to Kim. “I hope so.”
She inhales, short and sharp. “Is that it?”
He just nods.
Kim nods back. “Okay,” she says. She folds in her lips then says, firmly, “Open it.”
“Okay,” Jimmy echoes. He breathes out. “Okay.” He tears through the thin seal, the plastic window crackling as the envelope bends. He pulls out the letter. Unfolds it slowly, revealing the score page section by section, eyes skimming over everything as he looks for the only number that really matters. It feels just like last time, like a sea of black letters and digits.
“Here,” Kim says softly, and she’s suddenly standing in front of him, reaching for the paper.
He hands it to her.
Her brow pinches, her eyes narrowing as they scan the text, and, like earlier in the elevator, time seems to slow, the world fading at the edges—and then a smile breaks over Kim’s face. “Jimmy,” she says, still staring at the letter, grinning, and, her eyes still scanning: “Jimmy…I think this is really good.”
Wings beat in his chest. “Yeah?”
She nods firmly, smile bright as her pupils dance over the letter.
And he exhales shakily, a long-held breath. “Really good as in…good enough to actually get into law school really good?”
Kim finally looks at him. She doesn’t reply. She just stares up, her eyes full. The winged bird in his chest is circling. Lights shine in her eyes.
Her gaze flickers down to his lips.
And he almost steps forward. He shouldn’t have come here. The words are halfway to his mouth. Her lips tilt up in the beginnings of a smile, and he looks away. Looks to the empty kitchen, to the dark television, to the new artwork that’s been hung on the living room wall at some point over the last almost-year. He wonders if Kim bought it or Ellen. It’s a black and white photograph of the desert inside a white frame.
He swallows, and then looks back to Kim.
Her face is softer, brows tilting down. She smiles. She touches her forehead, and Jimmy has a passing moment of confusion at the new gesture before she says, “You have some ink.”
Jimmy touches the same spot on himself. He can’t feel it there, of course he can’t. He lowers his hand and shakes his head. “Got it all over my pants today, too,” he says, indicating the finger-streaks of ink on the front of his slacks.
“I noticed that,” she says wryly.
He chuckles and looks back to the black-and-white desert photograph hanging in the living room. But he feels like he can sense the ink on him now, a pressure on his forehead like Kim’s actually touched him there. He lifts his fingertips to the spot again.
“Little to the left,” Kim murmurs.
He laughs again, pulling his gaze back from the painting. And he walks over to the bathroom, flicking on the light. The switch starts the shower fan, too, a low hum above.
Jimmy peers at himself in the circular mirror. There’s a swipe of black ink over his skin, about where he’d brush away his bangs. Now that he sees it there, he can almost remember doing it. He balls up some toilet paper and dampens it under the faucet then starts rubbing at the mark. The ink is as stubborn as the high-quality copier ink on skin ever is, and he exhales through his teeth.
Kim’s reflection appears in the mirror beside him.
He lowers the wad of paper and chuckles, turning to face the real her. “Caught the bus twice like this, you know.” At her tilted head, he shakes his head. “I went home after work first, but I couldn’t…”
Kim cuts him off with a nod. “I’m glad you came,” she says. She’s still holding his letter from the LSAC, and she must notice him looking at it because she holds it out to him.
He shakes his head, waving her away. Goes back to scrubbing at the ink.
“Here,” Kim says. She reaches past him to the bathroom cabinet and pulls out an opaque plastic bottle with a purple cap.
He quirks an eyebrow.
“Make-up remover,” she says. “It’ll help.”
“Thanks,” he murmurs, taking it from her. He dabs some on the toilet paper. The ink comes away this time. As he cleans his skin, his eyes flick to Kim’s in the reflection.
Hers are focused, solemn, with dark lines beneath them. Her words come suddenly, “Let’s go celebrate.”
He turns to her again. “Celebrate?”
She smiles again now, nodding. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
“Kim, I’m a mess,” Jimmy says, gesturing to his slacks again. “These look like an elephant’s painting at the zoo.”
She snorts, and her gaze darts to the mirror again. Then back to him. A smile flickers back onto her face. “Well, I need a drink, anyway,” she says mildly, and she’s walking out of the bathroom. Over her shoulder she adds, “You’re really not going to come with me?
Jimmy exhales, laughing. He checks his reflection one last time. The ink is just about gone, only a faint trace that you’d have to be really looking for to notice. Yellow-and-blue striped fish swim along the shower curtain behind him.
He turns and follows her.
The bar is dark, liquid smoke hanging in the dense air. There’s a television flickering in the corner, a football game that looks like it was first broadcast about twenty years ago. Metal-shaded bulbs hang on long wires from the already low ceiling, and they’re just bright enough to see the place by, just bright enough to light up Kim’s face when she turns to him.
The two of them are sitting up at the bar, perched on too-tall stools, the wooden surface beneath Jimmy’s bare arm sticky with something. But he grins, tapping his fingernails on the wood. He looks out into the smoky-waved darkness.
Kim’s already finished her first drink. She gestures to the bartender for another round of boilermakers, so he drains his, too, knowing as he does it that it’s going to hit him soon, that he’s finishing it way too fast. Kim’s a warped golden shape that comes into clarity as he lowers his glass again.
Their drinks arrive. The shots drop into the beer in a whirl of golden lights.
“Cheers,” Kim says, and she raises her glass to her lips then wipes her hand over her mouth, staring off into some middle distance somewhere. Her eyes are moving back and forth. Reading invisible text, some novel that she scans page by page.
Their beer glasses slowly drain again, Jimmy keeping pace. Kim gestures again for another round, and he drinks, drinks until the air around him feels like it’s blurred with more than just the thick smoke.
Kim taps her glass with her nail like she’s ringing a bell, steady and rhythmic. When she looks to Jimmy, she smiles, but it falls every time she looks away again.
A group of pool players cheer loudly just as Jimmy finally says, “You okay?”
Kim turns to him. “Hm?”
It’s quiet again now, but he tilts toward her anyway. “Are you okay?”
She laughs, eyebrows twisting in surprise.
He props his chin on his hand, still leaning close to her on the bar. His bare elbow sticks to the wooden surface. His palm is surprisingly cold against his cheek.
Kim still doesn’t answer. After another moment, she turns her body toward him. She tips her own head, too, matching the angle of his. Her eyebrows stay twisted, and he’s staring at them trying to figure out if she’s really surprised by his question after all, or just curious, or maybe sympathetic, or tired—
Then, at the same time, she says, “I’m okay—”
—and he says, “Rough day?”
She gives a long sigh. Lowers her angled head to her hand so she can keep it tilted there, too, face to face with him above the bar. “It was a day.”
He makes a little face.
She sighs. “Today, Jimmy, I got to be a glorified mailman.”
He hums at the back of his throat. “I heard.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“Mm,” he says softly, “Jack told me you had to go pick something up from some other law firm?” He adjusts his head on his hand again.
“Surprised he gave you the time of day,” Kim mutters. “He’s usually so busy with all of Hamlin’s best assignments.”
“Yeah, well, he wasn’t exactly…” Jimmy says, then he swallows and closes his eyes.
Kim makes a soft noise. “Wasn’t exactly…?”
“Shit, Kim, I totally forgot to copy that thing he gave me,” Jimmy says. He opens his eyes again. He gives a short chuckles. “He wanted ten copies by five-thirty.”
Kim’s lips twitch. “I’m pretty sure he’ll live.’ And, under her breath: “Hitler-Youth-looking asshole…”
Jimmy snickers, shaking against his hand. He already knows that the world is going to tip and spin when he shifts his head upright again, so he doesn’t move it at all, just keeps himself propped there, elbow on the bar, facing Kim.
A grin crawls up her face again. “Jimmy,” she says, hushed. “You did it.” And the grin, somehow, keeps growing. “I always knew you could do it.”
He smiles back, “Always?”
“Oh yeah,” she says solemnly, but she clearly can’t keep the smile from her lips for long. “You walked into the mailroom one day and I thought—wow, there’s a guy who could crush the LSAT.”
He laughs, chest filling with brightness.
“And then the sunroof story was just the icing on the cake,” she says.
Jimmy grins wide enough he feels it on his hand. “The chocolate frosting on the cake, Kim.”
“Jesus,” Kim says, turning her head. Her next words are half-muffled by her palm: “Why did you even do that?”
He shrugs, chuckling softly. “Seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says. “Like, you’d definitely never drive that car again. Right?”
She snorts into her hand. “Probably not.”
“Exactly,” he says, pointing his free finger at her.
She swipes his finger aside, and he lets his hand be pushed away. She adjusts her head on her hand again, cheekbone on her palm. “You’re right, that makes total sense.”
“Mm, good,” Jimmy murmurs.
“But you didn’t think about, I don’t know, starting smaller, maybe peeing in his pool—”
He shakes his head, jerky movements. “That’s basic stuff, Kim, basic—”
“Right, of course, I’m so sorry.”
He laughs, closing his eyes again briefly. “He totally did have a pool though. Dickhead.” In here with the dark backs of his eyelids, with the beer and whiskey spinning beneath his skin, and the stink of cigarettes and spilled liquor in his nostrils, he feels suddenly like he’s back there again, like he’s drunk in the afternoon, walking down Cermak, the white BMW swimming into his vision.
“I mean it,” Kim says softly, from somewhere.
He opens his eyes.
“I always knew you could do it.”
He grins, too. He nestles into his hand, and it’s warmed up now, matching the flush of his face. “You gotta be there when I get my first application back, okay?” he says, muffled.
“Okay,” Kim says quietly. “Deal.”
And he murmurs, “Deal.”
He always has Kim open the letters.
They arrive, one by one, to the mailroom. Usually, he catches them first, a flicker of his name as he sorts through the stack, black words daggered into white paper. But he isn’t always the one to see them. If Henry or the others wonder about the letters coming in with Mr. James M. McGill on the front, with the logos of colleges and universities emblazoned on the white envelopes, they don’t say anything. The letters find their way into his locker without comment.
White rectangles on his dark backpack, waiting.
He gets the news from her face instead of from the cold black ink. Kim’s the one who has to read the words themselves over and over, has to see the, We’re sorry to… and the, We regret to… beneath the ever-changing college letterheads. Jimmy just takes the letters back from her and stuffs them into his bag. At night, he’ll cross those schools off his list and drop the letters into his trash.
Crumpled white balls among all his empty takeout boxes.
Every time Kim opens another one, there’s an hour-long split-second before her face changes, before her brows draw together and eyes soften in sympathy. Then she’ll smile at him and shrug as if it doesn’t matter. “Well, that one was a longshot, we knew that…” she’ll say, or, “You didn’t want to go there anyway,” or some other platitude, until finally she says nothing at all, just looks at him with the same soft eyes, until Jimmy almost can’t bear to look back.
And he thinks that he wouldn’t look back, if only it weren’t for the other option, if only that didn’t mean having to read rejection after polite rejection himself.
After the first few, Jimmy decides to save them up, to keep each week’s letters hidden in his bag until Friday. Then, on Friday, he’ll hunt for Kim, and every week she’ll set down her pen or her highlighter and they’ll find an empty breakroom, or a quiet cubicle, or the mailroom storeroom. Every week, it feels as if he’s setting up pool balls, waiting for the crack of the break.
They all bounce hopelessly off the pockets with a single turn of Kim’s brow.
And, “That’s okay, they were so far away,” Kim will say, or, “We had a transfer student from there, she was horrible,” maybe, and then finally, nothing, just the soft eyes and disappointment.
It feels like a hot air balloon spiraling to the ground, cooling and cooling, twisting down into the dirt.
“You didn’t do it without me, did you?” Kim says, her voice crackling warmly out of the phone against his ear. She’s spoken without waiting for him to say hello.
Jimmy gives a small smile, and he looks to the stack of letters on his little kitchen table. There’s half a dozen of them. Six more letters. “Nah,” he says, “‘course I didn’t, Kim.”
“I just got back to the office,” Kim says, huffing. He can hear the creak of her desk chair. “Howard sent me down to the courthouse.”
Jimmy nods. He stirs his spoon through his cereal then lowers it again. His yellow list of schools is curling nearby, and he looks away. He stares at the toasted oats softening in the milk instead. “Busy at court?”
Kim groans. “Yeah, madhouse, as ever,” she says, but her tone is almost fond. “Munsinger snapped at a bunch of potential jurors. Felt like the circus was in town.”
He chuckles.
She makes a sound. “But as days go…at least I wasn’t a glorified mailman.”
He smiles. “Out saving the world, then?”
“Mm, practically carrying babies out of burning buildings,” she says, soft in his ear.
“Hah,” Jimmy says. “Shame I missed that.” He swirls his spoon around again, and his eyes flicker to the six envelopes. They’re sliced with the blue evening light that’s sliding in through his blinds. “I think these’re the last of them, Kim,” he says. White rectangles on his dark table. “I double-checked the list.”
She’s silent, just the hiss of the line.
It’s just gone five-thirty. He should turn on the lights soon. He rolls his head on his stiff neck, rubbing the knot in it with his fingertips. Six letters. Gambling on a dice.
And Kim speaks again, finally. Her voice is light. “I’m ahead on my billable hours this week, you know. Just finishing up here. Maybe we could get dinner. Thai?”
Jimmy exhales through his nose. “I already have cereal.”
She snorts. “Wow, sad sack.”
And he laughs, loud and bright. “Well, jeez, Kim,” he says warmly, “and here I was—”
There’s a knock at the door.
He sighs. “Hang on, delivery guy’s got the wrong apartment again.” He sets the handset down on the table and walks the few steps to the door. Slides the chain off and opens it, saying, “This is still 1B, man—oh.”
It’s Chuck. He’s standing there, his face pinched in annoyance, his blue suit handing sharply on his shoulders. He has his cellphone in his hand.
“Uh, hey, Chuck,” Jimmy says. “What’s up?”
Chuck tries to look past Jimmy. “Do you have someone here?”
Jimmy turns back, too, as if he needs to check. He says, “No?”
Chuck frowns. “I heard laughter.”
“Oh,” Jimmy says. He looks again at the phone in Chuck’s hand. At the Mercedes parked up nearby. Back to Chuck. “Uh—everything okay?”
And Chuck inhales, chest rising. “Listen, Jimmy, I really hate to spring this on you.” Then silence again, then another breath. “Someone needs to go up and be with Mom.”
The air leaves Jimmy’s lungs, and he says, “Mom?”
Chuck shakes his head, holding up a flat palm. “She’s fine, the hospital just phoned. There was a complication this afternoon, and they suggested, quite strongly, that someone should stay with her overnight. And of course they can’t keep her themselves.”
The hospital? Jimmy thinks. Complication?
“I’ve already phoned the airport. There’s a flight at seven forty. They’re holding a ticket at the desk for you.” He opens his billfold and hands Jimmy a wad of notes. “That should be more than enough to cover things.”
Jimmy stands there, holding the money, mouth open.
And Chuck frowns at him, then waves a hand. “Jimmy? Hello?”
He blinks. “Yeah, uh—seven thirty?”
“Forty, seven forty. Get a taxi to the house, the spare key is in the usual spot,” Chuck says. “And Mom’s left the keys to the Volvo in the kitchen drawer. Okay? Then she doesn’t have to sit in the back of a filthy cab on the way home.” He stares at Jimmy for another moment. Pulls a business card and HHM-branded black pen from his front pocket. He scribbles something on the back, then holds out the card. “There’s the flight number and hospital. Jimmy?”
Jimmy clears his throat and takes the card with his free hand. His brother’s writing is neat and close, all looping cursive.
“I really have to get back to the office,” Chuck says, and he frowns at Jimmy one last time. He opens his mouth, and his lips start to shape words, but then they still. And instead he says, “Call me tomorrow. You know my number.”
Jimmy nods jerkily. As Chuck turns and walks on polished black shoes back to his polished black Mercedes, he wonders what his brother had been about to say first. Don’t fuck this up, maybe. Jimmy stands there with the cash in one hand and the business card in the other, hovering in the threshold as Chuck’s car pulls away, lights glowing.
And then he finally shuts the door again. The handset is still lying on the table, there at the end of its curling cord.
Jimmy lowers the cash and the card to the wood. They lie there, folded and creased. He lifts his phone up to his ear. The line crackles. He clears his throat again. “Uh—wasn’t the delivery guy. Something’s come up.”
“Jimmy,” Kim says quietly.
He extends a fingertip to the stack of law school letters. Six of them. Lying there between his bowl of soggy cereal and the folded bills from Chuck.
Kim’s said something, he hasn’t heard it.
“Huh?” he says.
“Do you need a ride?” she repeats, and he can hear the sound of drawers opening and closing on her end of the line. “It’s on my way.”
“It’s not on your way,” Jimmy says, because it isn’t, none of it is, and he huffs out a sharp breath. “Kim, I can do things for myself.”
“I know that, dumbass,” she says. There’s the familiar click of her briefcase closing. And she delivers the lie again, like a verdict, and of course this time he believes it: “Jimmy, it’s on my way.”
The old statue is still there in the Albuquerque International Sunport, the bronze man holding the tail of an eagle. The frozen figure hangs there, leaned forward, stuck in the moment right before falling—or maybe right before flying away.
“He said she was okay, right?” Jimmy says, for the third time. He looks to Kim. “Did you hear him say she was okay?”
“It was hard for me to really hear him, Jimmy,” she says, again. Her eyes dart to his, soft blue. “I think so.”
He nods and looks back to the statue.
Kim says, “What’s the flight number?”
He can’t remember it. He tries to fish Chuck’s business card from his pocket, but it’s all just one tangled mess now, the card folded somewhere in with the cash. He just hands it all over to Kim and tries to forget about it.
“I’ll go get your ticket,” she murmurs, and then she’s gone.
People pass behind the bronze statue. The lights of the departures board flicker with their passing bodies. Jimmy wishes he could call his mother. Maybe he could ring her hospital before the flight. But he can’t remember the name of the hospital, and Kim has the card.
Hospital, he thinks, she’s in the hospital.
Chuck said she was okay, right? It’s just his own voice inside his head now, no one beside him to ask.
Hospital, he thinks again, she’s in the hospital.
Then he hears his name. It’s Kim, beckoning to him from the ticket counter, so Jimmy leaves the bronze man to his flight, or to his precarious fall, and walks over to join her. The airport is loud with chattering and with baggage carts and with squeaking carousel wheels, somewhere.
The woman behind the counter smiles at him brightly, lipstick bright red, a patterned handkerchief twisted around her neck. “James?”
He nods. “Yeah, uh—James McGill.”
She smiles again, sincerely. “We have two spaces near the rear of the plane. Or a window and an aisle closer to the front, but those aren’t together.”
Kim flicks through the wad of cash and hands over about half of it, then says, “We’ll take the two at the back.”
Jimmy frowns at her. Two?
“Wonderful,” the clerk says, and she punches some buttons, the glow of her computer screen reflecting in her glasses. Two tickets print from a tiny grunting printer nearby, spitting out bit by bit until the clerk tears them off and hands them over to Kim. She gives Jimmy a strange, small nod. “My condolences.”
The last word only sinks in as they’re walking away. Jimmy stops, stomach suddenly heavy. “Condolences?”
And Kim just smiles gently. “A little white lie,” she says, separating the tickets and then handing him one. “Here you go.”
He takes it. Stares down at the paper. The airline logo curls colorfully along the top. He looks to Kim, holding the extra ticket, and frowns. “Is Chuck coming?”
She just tilts her head, eyebrows twisting and mouth flickering in a confused smile. She stands there, holding the ticket. Her ticket.
“Oh,” he says, looking back down at his. He feels like he’s following a rope blindfolded in the dark. He did that at summer camp once. Through a forest. It was night, and it smelled of wet earth as he slipped over roots and—
“Is that okay?” Kim cuts into his thoughts.
He looks at her again.
“I mean, it just kind of happened—”
He says, “Don’t you have work?”
Kim gives a small smile. “What, another Saturday down in the cornfield highlighting discovery?” And then she shakes her head shortly, lips pinched. “I don’t have work, Jimmy.”
He nods. Looks back to his ticket again. Gate A10. ABQ to ORD. Looks back to Kim. “Didn’t you park in the short term lot?”
She shrugs. “I’ll pay the fine.”
He nods again. “Okay,” he murmurs. His heart beats. “I can pay you back.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” she says, so softly. She touches his elbow, a little point of warmth on his bare elbow. He’s still in his work button-up. His bag is at his feet, stuffed unevenly with clothes. He realizes he forgot his toothbrush.
His law school letters are in there, too. Six tries, a dice roll.
“Come on,” Kim says, her fingers vanishing from his skin. “C’mon, Jimmy, we need to get to the gate.”
When she turns, he follows her.
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