| [ [_prev chapter<< _] ] | [ [_index_] ] | [ [_>>next chapter_] ] |
“So this is you, huh?” Jimmy says, as he leans back in the desk chair. It creaks—the familiar, rusty-hinged sound that always fills the second floor of HHM, where the cubicles are ever occupied by new associates sitting and creaking and working and creaking. He taps his hands on the desk surface and swivels, then nods to a nearby door. “Good of them to save you a spot right by the bathroom.”
“Hey, do you have a desk?” Kim asks, consolidating a few of her folders into one stack.
“Well, when I do, it’s gonna be a whole lot better than this,” Jimmy says. He twists around again, taking in the bare blue cubicle walls. Touches one with a fingernail. “What fabric is this?”
“I believe it’s chiffon,” Kim says, resting against her desk now, half leaning, half sitting. She laces her fingers before her; they send sharp pleats down her skirt, a new skirt that Jimmy hasn’t seen before. Her blouse is familiar at least: a pale kind of yellow thing. Her necklace hangs just above it, glinting.
It’s still early morning, and Jimmy can already tell that this is the only time of day Kim’s new cubicle is going to get any sunlight—and even then just a little. As she leans against her desk, only the top half of her is illuminated, the morning sun coming in sideways through the far windows, and he knows that soon it will rise higher, breaking the top of the frame. Gone again until the next day.
She shifts her hands and meets his gaze. “Are you coming to the courthouse later?”
There’s a beat. “Of course,” Jimmy says. He pauses again, studying her, and then adds, “Henry told you, right? We’re all gonna come.”
“Right,” Kim says. She folds her lips inward and nods.
Jimmy swivels in the chair, filling the silence with the squeaks. He tilts his head, but when Kim doesn’t say anything else, he sighs. “So, you got a big speech prepared?”
Kim chuckles. “I don’t think that’s how it goes, Jimmy.”
He makes a tsking noise with his teeth. “You know for a bunch of performers, there’s not a lot of showmanship with you guys.”
“Performers?”
“Sure,” he says.
The elevator arrives nearby with its five-note musical motif. Kim twists her watch around on her wrist and checks the time, then reaches for her suit jacket and shrugs it on. As she buttons it, her pale yellow blouse transforms, suddenly unfamiliar. “I’d better go,” she says. She raises her eyebrows. “And you should be in the mailroom already.”
Jimmy waves a hand, but he rises from the creaking chair. “Alrighty,” he says. “Well, I’ll see you later, then?”
“Yeah, see you there,” Kim says, and she’s already distracted, already heading out of her new cubicle and down to whatever meeting or introductory tour she has waiting for her now that she’s just hours away from being sworn in—from walking into the Albuquerque courts as one thing and walking out as a lawyer.
He lingers at the edge of her cubicle a moment longer, hand on her desk. Flips a page on the desk calendar beside her boxy computer, beside her HHM-branded mug and HHM-branded pens. There are already a couple of colorful post-it notes adorning her cubicle walls, bright squares of pink and yellow, and he smiles. Phone numbers and dates marked for future reference.
Downstairs, the well-known hum of copy machines and fluorescent lights covers him, a familiar touch. He unzips his windbreaker in the breakroom, humming softly to himself.
Henry stops in the threshold and raises a set of knowing eyebrows. “So, how’s she settling in?”
Jimmy chuckles. “I don’t like this meddling new side of you, y’know,” he says, as he balls up his jacket and tosses it into his locker then shuts the door.
Henry just waits, head tilted.
“She’s good. Ask her yourself,” Jimmy says warmly, brushing past Henry and back out into the mailroom proper.
They don’t get a chance to talk to Kim until after her swearing-in ceremony finishes. When Jimmy and the others first arrive, the court is already almost full, groups of families and friends gathered loosely at the ends of the aisles or filing into the rows of seats.
Jimmy slides in near the front and sits, Henry on one side of him and Burt on the other. There’s the soft buzz of idle chatter and the sharp squeak of good shoes on polished floor.
At the front, standing, waiting to take their seats, is the line of lawyers-to-be. Kim and Howard are talking softly, together with another two men, one younger and one older. As Jimmy watches, Kim smiles, a flashing thing that doesn’t reach her eyes. She nods, shifting her weight between her feet, and then her gaze finally catches his.
Jimmy raises a hand to the side of his head in a half-hearted salute.
And Kim shakes her head, but her smile is warmer now, still lingering as she turns back to the others.
Behind her, at the far end of the room above the long judge’s bench, is an enormous mural. Geometric shapes and patterns that remind Jimmy of the sun, somehow; that remind him of the desert. Reds and yellows and oranges, fragmented.
When the members of the bar committee file inside a short time later, they obscure it, solemn black shapes who speak solemnly about the importance of the law and the hard work it’s taken these fine young men and women to get here; who later read out an oath that Kim and the others repeat: to support the Constitution, to respect the courts of justice.
Halfway through the oath, there’s a hum as the central heating turns on. Jimmy feels a wave of warm air against his ankles, coming out from a vent in the wall. He looks to the window, where outside bare-branched trees ripple in the wind, where across the street cubicle workers sit in yellow-lit squares, their tiny stages brightly illuminated for everyone to see. Jimmy watches one of the office workers wander down a hallway, passing between the squares, stopping at a water cooler—until he hears Hamlin’s voice, and turns back to see Howard standing beside Kim, both straight-backed and still.
Jimmy listens as Howard gives a short speech vouching for Kim. The neat cut of her jacket vouches for her, too, in its own hard way, and if Jimmy hadn’t seen the soft yellow blouse earlier he would never guess it was under there, unassuming and well-worn. From behind, she just looks like the others, sharp and professional. Her hair hangs down her back in a neat ponytail, straight and gathered, nothing out of place.
He can see her pride, though, too, and her relief, can see it in the fall of her shoulders and tilt of her head. And maybe he can only see it because he knows it’s there, just like he knows the blouse is there, all of it soft and familiar beneath the pointed shoulders of dark blue.
Later, they stand outside, lingering on the courthouse steps. A cold wind rises and falls, brushing through the loose figures, channelled down between the buildings, and Jimmy zips up his windbreaker.
There’s a feeling in the air around them as if they’ve just been let out of a school assembly—the other groups of family members and friends talking in loud voices, like they’re making up for the silence of the ceremony. Jimmy waits with Burt, Ernie, and Henry until they spot Kim twisting between the other suited figures, her head up.
She joins them, smiling, and Howard follows closely behind. He stops just on the fringe of their group and nods a greeting, then looks to something past Jimmy, absent-mindedly straightening his French cuffs.
Henry holds out a gift bag to Kim. “From all of us.”
She takes it from him, peering inside. With another smile, she pulls a white envelope from the top and opens it, sliding out the neat card they’d all signed that morning. There’s a square of colorful paper tucked inside, and she shifts it aside with her thumb. Her eyes flicker over it, then she looks up. “This is a bus ticket to El Paso.”
“Yes, it is,” Henry says simply.
“That was Jimmy’s idea,” Ernie adds.
Jimmy shrugs, meeting Kim’s eyes. “Exit strategy.”
“Exit strategy,” she says, chuckling. She scans the ticket again. “For next week?”
Burt nods. “We figured that gives you a few days to realize the rest of HHM isn’t as cool as us, and then you can bail.”
“All expenses paid!” Ernie adds brightly.
Kim chuckles. “Thanks, guys.” She tucks the ticket back inside the envelope then returns it to the bag. Her eyebrows rise, and she pulls out a white t-shirt, then shakes it loose, examining it.
“I told them we should’ve given that to you before the ceremony so you could, you know, wear it. Really get some use out of it,” Jimmy says, grinning. “But I was voted down.”
“Damn,” Kim says. She holds it up to her torso; it’s enormous. On the front, in black sharpie: HHM Mailroom, Class of ‘93. She smiles, head angled downward.
“So you don’t forget us, right?” Burt says, and his voice is unusually soft. He nods and holds out his arms almost tentatively. She moves into the hug, and he pats her on the back then steps away. “Congrats, Kim.”
“Thanks, guys,” Kim says. She hugs Ernie next, then Henry—the older man for a little longer than the other two, then she lets him go and steps back.
There’s a flicker of hesitation as she looks to Jimmy. He doesn’t know if it’s from him or from her, or both, but then she moves closer, and he presses his palm to her back and then tucks his face into her, looking over at the others from her shoulder. Kim’s arms move up behind him. He feels her fingers press tight into his own back, and he breathes slowly against her.
She shifts away. She runs a hand over her face, then shakes her head. “So, uh—” She chuckles, then looks down at the bag again, tucking the shirt back inside next to the bus ticket, then she smiles around at them. “Thank you.” She swallows. “You know, I could’ve lived with flowers.”
“We got you those, too,” Henry says. “They’re in water on your desk. Just not quite so practical.”
“And Kim’s a practical kind of gal,” Jimmy adds, and her gaze cuts to him. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker and shrugs.
Her eyes flash with mirth. “You really thought of everything, then.”
“Well,” Howard says at the edge of the group, and Jimmy turns—he’d forgotten Hamlin was even there. Howard opens his mouth to say something further and then he falters, ending up with just: “Well, we’re all very proud, Kim.”
“Thank you, Howard,” she says.
Hamlin nods. He glances around at the group again, then focuses on Jimmy. “Jimmy,” he says. “Do you have a minute?”
Jimmy looks briefly to the others, but agrees, and Howard leads him a few steps away from the group.
Hamlin’s face pulls together solemnly and he says, “Has Chuck spoken with you?”
Jimmy blinks. “Huh?”
And Howard shifts. “Well, perhaps he figured something else out, then.” He smiles. “Just let me know, all right?”
Let you know? Jimmy thinks. “Uh, sure,” he says, and he nods vaguely as Howard pats him on the shoulder and moves away, heading toward the parking building.
“Guess Hamlin’s not coming drinking with us, huh?” Burt says, as Jimmy returns to the group, staring at the receding back of Howard.
“Drinking?” Kim says. “How many celebrations are we going to have?” Her gaze is still on Hamlin, too, until she finally shifts it back to the group.
Around them, the loud chatter rises. The still-busy traffic of the nearby city streets is an ever-present background groan.
Henry smiles. “At least one more, I think.”
The groan of the city follows them to a rooftop bar near the courthouse, where outdoor heaters glow orange in the dusk and take the chill off the November air.
As they drink, Jimmy unzips his jacket, settling back into one of the mismatched armchairs that have been arranged around the many low tables up here. There’s seventies sofas beside wooden benches and hard-backed chairs, an eclectic arrangement of furniture that somehow, beneath the fairy lights twisting from a pergola overhead, makes sense.
Jimmy listens to the low chatter of the others’ conversation. Burt and Ernie have tall glasses of Pepsi—though tonight they’re really filled with Pepsi, so the joking between the two is much more sober and subdued. Across the roof, Jimmy can see a couple of people in nice suits he recognizes from the ceremony earlier, people who’ve had the same idea and come to celebrate at the closest bar, and he notices Kim glancing over every so often as if she knows them, too.
The warmth from the glowing heater beside him grows, seeming to rise and rise as the evening passes and the ice cubes melt in drink after drink. After a while, he slips out of his windbreaker, laying it beside him and staring through the rails of the balcony, down to where the low rooftops of the city brighten as night falls. Red security lights and yellow screen doors.
He sips his drink, reclining in the armchair. The bourbon is thinned by the ice, sweet and orange and bitter. On a flat roof nearby, he watches a woman tend to a narrow garden, thin beds of green laid out against the side of an air-conditioning unit. She has a wide hat on, covering her face. He drains the watery dregs of his glass.
There’s movement beside him, and he turns away from the edge to see Kim. She smiles. She’s holding her suit jacket, folded over her joined hands.
“Here.” Jimmy gestures for it, and she hands the jacket to him. He lays it over his windbreaker then looks back up to her.
“You okay?” she says.
Jimmy nods. He glances behind her. The others have moved away, abandoning their Pepsis to damp ring marks on the old wooden table, and they’re standing now at the opposite edge of the roof. As he watches, Ernie points at something far away.
Then Kim moves closer. She sits on the arm of his chair and turns to him. Her hair rises in thin drifts, lifting over her forehead then twisting back, turning in the miniature weather systems formed between the warm heater and the cool night wind.
And Jimmy leans back. He feels soft and boneless—a warm, whiskey drunkenness that’s snuck up on him without him realizing it.
“Hey,” Kim says, and she smiles. “Happy Birthday.”
He’s silent. He plays with a fraying patch in the fabric of the armchair—thin orange-red threads holding strong over the picked-at foam beneath. Eventually, he says, “I was hoping everyone had forgotten.”
“Yeah, well,” Kim says, “I think the others have.”
Jimmy nods, looking over at them again. “Yeah.”
Burt and Ernie are standing on the low riser along the bottom of the railing now, their toes on the wooden block. They lean forward over the edge, bodies bending sharply at the waist. Burt makes as if he’s going to fall, and then Ernie snags the back of his shirt, and the two step back, laughing loudly enough it carries through the buzz of the bar.
Jimmy sighs, and looks back up to Kim. “But not you,” he says finally. “You didn’t forget.”
Kim shrugs lightly. ‘Well, November 12th. The day Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated.”
He grins. “Yeah?”
But she chuckles, shaking her head. “I don’t know. It could be.”
“I’d believe it,” Jimmy says. He frowns up at her, studying the drift of her hair in the tiny storms, studying the way she folds in her lips under his scrutiny. “I’d buy it from you,” he murmurs. “Any day.”
She gives him a soft look, eyebrows tilting.
He shrugs again, tipping his head back against the old fabric of the armchair. He closes his eyes. After a while, he says, “Anyway, thanks.”
“Of course,” Kim says quietly, and then, a moment later, “Get you another drink to celebrate?”
He peels his eyes open, and she nods to the empty old fashioned in his hand. He lifts the glass, contemplating it for a moment, then sets it back on his knee, onto the damp patch that’s already there. “Better not.”
“Some other time, then,” she says lightly.
“Yeah,” he says. He smiles, tilting his head a little closer to her before he realizes what he’s doing. He leaves it there. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”
Kim’s expression shifts to something tighter, something warier, and he gets it. He looks at the empty lowball glass in his hand, at his bony thumb pressing into the textured side, at the still-damp base resting on his slacks.
It’s like ice.
“Hm?”
He glances up.
Kim is frowning at him. She raises her eyebrows expectantly.
He must’ve said it aloud, then. So he repeats it. “It’s like ice, Kim,” he says. “Knowing you.”
“Ice?” she says, seconds later, or maybe minutes. Her eyes are dark.
Jimmy swallows. He shifts upright a little. He can feel the warmth of his drunkenness floating just beneath his skin. “I don’t mean…” he starts, and he reaches out a hand as if to touch her knee, but then draws it back. “I don’t mean like that,” he says. “You know I don’t mean cold.”
Kim’s brows draw together even tighter.
Jimmy sighs. “Forget it.”
“Jimmy…”
He looks to the others, to Ernie and Burt and Henry, who could come back to the table at any point—though, as Henry glances over then looks away just as quickly, Jimmy thinks, maybe not. Maybe they’re safe for a while.
But he shouldn’t do this. He shouldn’t keep following the path that he’s suddenly halfway down without expecting it, the hole he’s suddenly in the middle of. Not on the day she’s just been sworn in, on the day she’s celebrating, on his birthday—
But he can feel words bubbling before he’s had a chance to even think them, rising and already half out of his mouth, unfiltered. He worries he’s said them already, whatever they are, but from the look on her face he can tell he hasn’t.
She’s still waiting, gaze somehow soft and wary at once.
“You know I don’t mean it’s cold,” Jimmy says again, even softer. Or not just cold, because ice isn’t just cold. It isn’t just that.
He wants to tell her that it’s because he knows ice, knows the day his dad fractured an ankle when he was a little kid, racing to get to the store. Knows that, even then, he’d been the only one to see the glossy patch as they approached it in the alley beside Laramie Bridge. Knows that he hadn’t said anything, had just watched it glint and glimmer under the streetlamps.
He knows ice, knows that glint and glimmer, knows too well the tug of it in his gut whenever he’d seen it again, years later, on Michigan Avenue, with his hands deep in the sheepskin pockets of his coat, with his hair threaded thickly over his forehead. Knows the clatter of knees and elbows and backs against the cement, sharp pockets of sound, like dice rattling in a cup.
And he knows ice: ice that’s impossible to spot unless the winter sun hits it right, ice that’s keeping his balance, ice that’s invisible and tempting and dangerous and painful; and ice that’s deciding whether to keep walking at all.
“I just mean…” he starts again, and then he sighs. “I just mean it’s like ice.”
The letter comes and Jimmy doesn’t open it.
He stares at it in the mailroom that morning, his heart thudding against his jaw. Feels something bubbling beneath the surface of him.
He tucks the envelope into his back pocket before he can read the return address too closely, before the LSAC logo can burn too brightly into his retinas. He finishes sorting the rest of the mail, one piece at a time, dropping packages and papers into plastic containers with a hollow pulsing noise, and then he heads to the breakroom.
He opens his locker and shifts the letter to his windbreaker. He closes the door. He doesn’t open it.
He doesn’t open it the next day either, when he leaves his jacket at home, his bare arms cold on the trip into work, or the next, when he feels it in his pocket as he sits in the passenger seat of Chuck’s car. It crunches as Jimmy’s hand brushes against it, the thin plastic window crackling. He slides his hand back out again.
Chuck glances over briefly then looks away. He winds down his car window then presses a button on an intercom. It buzzes. They wait.
Jimmy peers through the front windscreen, where enormous gates with intricate metal detailing block any view of the rest of the driveway. Tall trees with loose green branches frame the gates. And this place must be near the river, because he’s been in the city long enough now to know you don’t find old trees like these anywhere else.
He wonders how much they add to the property value, wonders if they’re listed somewhere as fixtures. Two solid trees.
Chuck presses the button again, and this time there’s a flicker of static, and then the huge gates fold inward. He drives through.
Suddenly, there’s the house: just as enormous as the entryway had promised, multi-levelled and beige, with red-tiled roofs and Greek-style columns, with archways and balconies. Trimmed plants in individual terracotta pots line the front court.
The whole place feels like somewhere an old Hollywood star would go to retire, Jimmy thinks, somewhere tucked away off Sunset Boulevard—and Norma Desmond’s inside, with her ex-husband as a butler and her old silent films playing on loop.
“So this is him, huh?” Jimmy says, leaning forward as they slow to a stop near an entryway that juts out from the building, roofed with red tiles, too, the front door flanked by gently-curved columns.
“This is him,” Chuck says. His top lip flickers as he seems to examine the place as well, peering up to the wrought-iron curvature of the balconies, the hanging baskets of vine-like plants.
Howard Hamlin’s Xanadu.
Chuck shuts off the engine and unbuckles his seatbelt. “Watch out for Buster.”
Jimmy blinks. He opens the passenger door and steps out into the chill air and looks around, studying the shadowed gaps in the archways and alcoves for a huge dog-house now, or a bowl, or a chew toy. Nothing. He follows Chuck up to the front door—
—which opens with a flourish before they even reach it, Howard himself standing in the threshold. He’s wearing a navy blue sports jacket over a much paler blue shirt, and he grins broadly, stepping back to beckon them inside. “Chuck!” he says. “And Jimmy, welcome. Delighted to finally have you.”
Jimmy takes his shoes off beside the mat. The entryway is almost the size of his whole apartment: blank white walls, almost sculpted looking, with a row of empty hooks along one side and a long flat table along the other. In a small bowl on the table is a set of keys.
Howard gestures, taking Jimmy’s windbreaker from him and then hanging it on one of the hooks. Jimmy spares a quick glance at it, thinking of the letter tucked in the pocket, and he wonders if he should maybe hide it deeper, or move it to his pants—but he looks away instead, following the others as they move further into the house.
It doesn’t smell of cooking at all, though Jimmy has no idea where the kitchen is anyway, and he can’t see it. They pass through one living room and into a second, even larger one. Brown leather sofas are set out around a muted rug, and a smooth fireplace emerges from the wall, with logs stacked inside, unlit. On the far side of the room, bookshelves fit perfectly into holes dug into the plaster itself.
“Drink?” Howard offers, holding up a flask of amber liquid.
Chuck accepts a glass of the whiskey, and Jimmy declines, and the three of them sit around on the leather sofas. Jimmy perches on the edge, his socks frayingly out of place against the neat carpet.
Howard sets his glass down on an end table then crosses his legs, lacing his fingers together over his knee. He flicks his gaze to a clock on the wall, ornate hands with no numbers, then back to them. “Perfect timing as always, Chuck. Dinner will be along soon.”
Chuck nods.
“Never a second too early for a social occasion this one, is he?” Howard says, leaning a little closer to Jimmy, almost conspiratorially. “Do you know how long I’ve been on at him to join us for Thanksgiving? Always has a ready excuse.”
A soft thudding noise emerges from a neighboring room.
“Ah!” Howard says, unlacing his fingers and rising to his feet. “That’ll be Buster.”
And then a tiny white dog comes trotting around the corner, a moving ball of fluff with pointed ears and Jimmy thinks— that’s Buster? The dog rushes, a pale blur, over to Howard’s sock-covered feet, where it sits for a split second, tail wagging furiously, staring up at Hamlin, before weaving over to Chuck, who shrinks back on the sofa. The dog hops up, paws on the edge of the couch.
“Yes, hello, Buster,” Chuck says, giving his own knee a pat as if that’ll make do for the dog.
Buster yaps, then drops back down to the carpet. He sniffs along an invisible trail, winding his way up to Jimmy, stopping at Jimmy’s toes. His head snaps up then, black eyes shining and vacant.
“Hey buddy,” Jimmy says, reaching out to scritch the top of the dog’s head. The white fur is like downy fleece, like feathers.
Buster stares at him with empty eyes and makes a soft sound, then darts away, trotting back over to Howard.
Hamlin bends down, scratching behind the dog’s ears. “He’s a big softie,” Howard says.
Chuck shoots Jimmy a dry look, eyes flat.
Jimmy wipes a hand over his mouth, quickly glancing away.
“We had him groomed yesterday,” Howard continues. “Go show Chuck your paws, Buster, go on.”
Chuck leans back as the dog trots over to him again, and this time Buster jumps all the way up onto the sofa, turning in small circles beside Chuck, before bouncing back down to the floor and sitting, tail thudding against the carpet.
“That’s nice, Buster,” Chuck says.
Buster yaps.
Then there’s the sound of a car in the drive outside, slowing to a stop, and Buster’s ears prick up. After a moment, the front door opens, and keys jangle as they land in a bowl, and Buster trots off again, tail wagging, vanishing through the archway into the neighboring room. A soft voice begins speaking, and then more movement. Chuck shifts, standing in preparation, and Jimmy does the same.
“…Ronaldo was off his feet,” a woman says from the other side of the archway, and then she passes through, her arms loaded down with brown bags, Buster at her heels. “I think other couples are starting to have the same idea, we’ll have to find a new place for next year.” Her eyes skim over the room then land on Jimmy, and she stops. “Hello,” she says. “I’m Linda Hamlin.”
She’s tall, with tidy red lipstick to match the decorative vases behind her, and styled hair that curls out from her cheeks. Her coat is buttoned almost to the top, but there’s a shine of jewelry above it, opalescent and clean to match the simple pearls in her ears. Howard takes some of the bags from her, and then with an arm free she moves forward, holding out her hand.
Jimmy shakes it. He wonders if he should give his full name too, but he just says, “Uh, Jimmy.”
“Of course,” Linda Hamlin says, and she moves on again, following Howard into the next room. It’s a dining room, with a long table under a row of recessed lights. Buster trots over to a small dog-bed that’s adorned with his name in capital letters, and he curls up neatly, watching the proceedings.
Howard and Linda unload the bags, revealing packages of food expensively wrapped in foil with decorative bows. There’s a bar between the dining room and the gleaming, stainless-steel kitchen, and the Hamlins set the food along it. Elegant tinfoil swans swim in a line, trailing pink ribbons.
“He really has outdone himself this year, hasn’t he?” Linda says, stepping back and turning to the others. “Chuck.” She holds out her arms, and the two hug briefly.
“Good to see you, Linda,” Chuck says.
“And you,” she says. “I knew Howard would get you here one day. No more excuses.”
Chuck shakes his head. “Not this year.”
“But how is your mother?” Linda asks.
With a quick nod, Chuck says almost exactly what he’d said to Jimmy in the HHM hallway a week ago: “We’re doing Christmas there this year. It would’ve be Rebecca’s family’s turn for Thanksgiving anyway, but with her in New York and myself so busy it just seemed easier to stay put.” He sets his whiskey down on the table then looks sideways. “Didn’t it, Jimmy?”
And Jimmy pauses. “Sure,” he says, after a beat. His mother had sounded happy when they’d spoken on the phone that morning, talking about her plans with her friends, and how nice it would be to have Christmas in the house again, all three of them—but confronted with the sterile kitchen and shining swans, it’s hard not to wish he’d had enough money for two flights home.
The food, as they unwrap it, does smell good, at least, though Jimmy barely knows what it is. There’s no turkey. Instead, one of the parcels contains a line of smaller birds that lie spread-eagled over a bed of vegetables, their skin golden and cracking. Another of the foil packages is just for Buster, some kind of pale greyish pâté that Howard spoons into a bowl and that Buster licks up with a bright pink tongue, his tail vibrating, as the rest of them serve their food and settle at the long table. Chuck sits opposite Howard, and Jimmy opposite Linda. The seat at the head remains empty. Buster eats at their feet.
“Well, Dad sends his love,” Howard says, pouring red wine into four enormously-bulbed glasses. “It’s a shame he couldn’t be here.”
“How is George?” Chuck asks, accepting his glass. “We’ve all been missing him.”
Howard gives a nod, face firmly set. “He’s well. We’ll visit him tomorrow.”
“Saturday,” Linda says, so dryly it feels like she’s remarking on a business meeting.
“Saturday,” Howard agrees. He hands Jimmy the last glass of wine and then sits back in his chair and holds his own up by the stem. “Cheers.”
They all murmur the salutation, then drink. Jimmy lowers his glass and peers down at the crispy-skinned bird lying on his plate among the strange vegetables and red seeds and decorate curls of whatever-the-hell.
“Spatchcock,” Howard says lightly, inclining his head.
Jimmy blinks. He looks down at the bird, then back to Howard.
“Spatchcock,” Howard repeats, artfully removing flesh from his own bird.
Jimmy frowns. He examines the little legs and wings.
“It’s not a type of bird, Jimmy,” Chuck says.
“What?” Jimmy says flatly. He blinks and looks at the thing before him. “What is it, then?”
“It’s quail,” Linda says, “with a pomegranate glaze.”
“Spatchcock is how it’s prepared ,” Chuck says.
“Oh,” Jimmy says weakly. He nods, and then lifts up his fork. Breaks the skin and shreds off some white meat. Pops it into his mouth. It’s okay. Below, Buster twists between the chair legs, stopping beside Jimmy’s shin. He stares up with empty eyes. Dead eyes. He licks his lips.
As Chuck and Howard launch into a conversation about work, Jimmy pokes at one of the orange curls on his plate—is it a carrot?—and tries not to think about the letter still tucked in his windbreaker pocket, the letter with the LSAC logo glowing on the top corner. The letter with his LSAT results. He jabs his fork into the back of the quail again, and Buster whimpers near his feet. There’s a light pressure on his sock, and Jimmy looks down to see the dog sitting there with one paw on the top of his foot, watching him dully.
Howard laughs at something, three short notes, like a verdict, and Jimmy looks up again. Hamlin gives a flashing smile. “So, Chuck, how’s Rebecca?”
“Hm?” Chuck says, and he glances up from his own plate. Blinks. “Oh, she’s good. She phoned last week. The shows are going well.”
“Yes?” Howard says.
Chuck nods. “Very good reviews.” He sips his wine, then gives a short nod. “I was hoping to get out there one weekend—though it doesn’t look like I’ll get the time, now.”
“Of course,” Howard murmurs. “Perhaps next time.”
Chuck nods. “She’s in high demand these days.”
There’s a whine beneath the table again, and the pressure on Jimmy’s foot increases. He tilts his head and frowns.
“Don’t give him anything off your plate,” Linda says. “Buster has a very picky palate.”
“Right,” Jimmy says, the word half strangled as he looks down at the black-eyed dog. Buster’s eyes are like little buttons on a teddy bear, totally flat. His mouth hangs open, pink tongue visible. Jimmy can hear him breathing.
“So, Jimmy!” Howard says brightly. “Tell us what you’ve been up to lately, my friend.”
Jimmy looks away from Buster. He takes a long sip of wine and swallows, thinking. “Oh, well…” he says, and he sets his glass down slowly.
Howard gives a slow, robotic blink.
And Jimmy smiles. “The other week I went bowling.”
“Oh, what club?” Linda says, eyebrows lifting in neat curves.
Jimmy clears his throat. “I mean—ten-pin bowling.”
“Ah,” Howard says.
“It was a place on Lomas though, actually,” Jimmy says lightly. He navigates a bit more of the quail onto his fork and then eats it gamely. “Real nice.”
Linda nods as if she hasn’t heard any of what he’s just said. She says, “Do you golf?”
“I, uh, not usually.”
“Oh, we love it,” Linda says. She looks to Howard and offers a red-lipped smile. “We first met at the club, you know, as teenagers. Though at the time I was just there for father.”
Howard nods. “Until I wowed her with my mid game.”
Linda gives a soft laugh, and it feels just as well-trod as the line from Howard that preceded it, as if they’ve been coining the same comment at every dinner party for twenty years.
Jimmy slips another curled piece of crunchy carrot into his mouth and chews. “And then what, you started sneaking off to make out down in a bunker?” he says. “Hidden somewhere in the rough?”
Linda gives him a blank look, then chuckles politely. “I’m sure we thought about it.”
“Well, of course,” Howard says. “We were lovebirds.”
Jimmy swallows dryly around the dehydrated food. “Yeah,” he says, finally, and he takes a sip of wine. “And look at you, still together.”
“Shared experiences are the most important thing for a marriage,” Linda says, voice sincere but somehow almost toneless, like it’s another sentence she’s said at every dinner party for twenty years.
“Guess that’s where I went wrong,” Jimmy murmurs. A smile pulls at his lips. “Not enough golfing.”
“Well, you’ll just have to join me some time, my friend,” Howard says. “Come down to Four Hills.”
“I, uh—” Jimmy says. “Thanks. Yeah.”
“HHM will be sponsoring a tournament at the Canyon Club next year, actually,” Linda says mildly.
“That’s right,” Howard says. “Linda’s on the board.”
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about that, actually, Howard…” Linda starts, and the two begin another dull conversation about some company arrangement that sounds no different from Howard’s earlier talk with Chuck about the Safework case.
The words wash past Jimmy, and he shifts in his chair, looking back to his plate. He doesn’t think about the letter hanging in his jacket. Doesn’t think about the other thought that’s been bubbling up every time he pictures opening it.
Buster whines beneath the table, and Jimmy pokes at his quail. One of the tiny bones snaps under the tines of his fork.
Later that night, Jimmy sits up in his bed back at his apartment, the letter in his hand. He can still taste the meal from earlier, the weird fruity tang of the quail and the earthiness of the vegetables. He flicks his thumbnail against the hard corner of the envelope. Sets it down next to him on the covers.
He reaches for a beer and opens it with the edge of his bedside table, chipping another chunk off the wood, then settles back against his pillows again. At Howard’s place, after the food, he had gone upstairs looking for a bathroom. He’d found it down a long hallway, the walls on the way lined with framed photos: Howard and Linda, smiling out at the camera. Standing in front of a set of elegant stone steps leading up to a fairway, Howard’s palm on Linda’s elbow, the same pose in every shot. In every year.
Jimmy picks up the envelope again. Runs his thumb over the biggest crease on the front, then flips it over, looking down at the seal. It’s folded upward on one edge of the lip, and he smooths it down, pressing firmly as if he can reattach the glue.
He imagines hearing the letter read out in Linda Hamlin’s affectless voice, hearing it as a rung on a ladder, a business transaction. He flicks his thumbnail along the seal again.
And the light dims through the narrow window above his bed, an automatic timer somewhere switching off. He takes a long drink from his bottle then wipes the foam from his lip and looks over to his fridge. The door is empty, just a takeout menu from a nearby Chinese place that he’s memorized already anyway.
He has another drink. Opens another bottle, takes another chunk from the edge of the table, sends another splash of beer onto the carpet as the heel of his palm comes down too violently and the beer froths over. The cap rattles off into some corner of the room.
He calls her. He was always going to call her. Ever since he got the letter, he was always going to call her. He waits, breathing, until she answers the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Kim,” he says, and he’s proud of himself for how normal his voice sounds. “Hey.”
“Oh boy,” she murmurs. There’s a shifting sound of fabric, of sheets, of mattresses, and Jimmy closes his eyes. “Jimmy?”
“Hey, Kim,” he says again. A long silence now and he wonders if she’s hung up. He lets out a shuddering, half laugh, then says, “I gotta tell you something.”
Edged with panic: “Jimmy—”
“No, no, don’t hang up,” he says quickly, sitting straighter in the bed.
“I don’t—”
“It’s not about us, well, not really—”
“Jimmy,” Kim says, voice fast. He hears her exhale. “I’m going to go. Call Chuck if you need someone, okay?”
“No, no, I can’t tell Chuck,” he says, and he feels suddenly, terrifyingly, sober.
As sober as he’d felt earlier at dinner, as sober as he’d felt when he left his jacket at home yesterday so he wouldn’t have to tell her at work, as sober as he’d felt standing there in the mailroom with the letter in his hand and his pulse hitting against his skull, knowing that if he didn’t tell her now while it was all still possible, while it was all still before him as potential and not broken—
“Howard has a dog,” he blurts, hurriedly.
There’s a long silence, then, “What?”
“Shit, Kim, and it’s a little evil son of a bitch, too,” he says, tucking the phone against his ear and holding his hands up to gesture. “White ball of, I don’t know—” He makes a round shape with his hands, a sphere.
He can hear soft laughter down the line now, warm and electric.
He grins. “His name is Buster and he’s, I swear to you, half the size of Mom’s cat.”
“No,” Kim says in a hushed, almost reverent, tone.
“Yes,” Jimmy says. “Chuck and I went there for Thanksgiving dinner and—Jesus, Kim, he lives in this damn Norman Ba—no, uh, Norma Desmond mansion, you know, like in Sunset Boulevard. Like I’m Bill Holden heading up there ‘bout to walk in on a funeral for a dead chimp—”
“Oh, God—” Kim says warmly, voice tinkling with laughter.
“And I met his wife, and they all just…” He trails off, then rubs his hand over his lips. “It was real weird. Like, Kim, they don’t even like each other.”
There’s a silence from the other end of the line, and he feels as if he can sense her thinking.
He gives a weak laugh, grasping for more to say, more to add—“And I can’t fathom them fucking, you know?”
Kim snorts. “Were you trying to?”
He chuckles. “Well…” But he swallows, and it all grinds to a stop, a screech of worn gears, the tirade of desperate words dropping out from beneath him. He just laughs again, hollow.
And it’s him and the envelope.
He flicks his thumbnail against the loose edge of the seal. A small, sharp sound.
After a while, Kim speaks again, softly. She says, “Why did you call me, Jimmy?”
He exhales. Presses his fingers tight into the paper. “I have…a letter here,” he says. “I haven’t opened it.” He breathes again, and she’s quiet, waiting. “I have a letter and I haven’t opened it.”
“Okay,” she says.
He runs a hand down his face, pressing fingers tight into his lips, and then all-at-once he says, “It’s from the LSAC, Kim.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath.
He hates himself, suddenly. Hates that this is how he’s doing it, that he can’t see her face, that she can’t see his. Hates that he’s been drinking, and that it’s Thanksgiving, and he just took it for granted that she’d be in her apartment alone.
But he’s always found it easier to talk to Kim over the phone, anyway. Just them and the copper wire.
He steadies himself, pulse thudding. “It’s my LSAT results. I sat the LSAT.” He exhales again. He waits for her to ask why he did it, waits for her to ask why he didn’t tell her until now. Waits for her to ask him anything.
But instead she says, “Open it.”
“What?”
“Jimmy.” His name through the headset is soft, sincere. “Jimmy,” she repeats, “so open it.”
“Okay,” he says. “Okay.” He slips his thumb, finally, under the seal, and then tears, the paper fracturing along the worn edge. He slides the letter out from inside and unfolds it. Breathes out shakily, somewhere halfway to a laugh.
“Jimmy?”
“I can’t remember what any of this means,” he says weakly, staring down at a grid of grades and numbers. He moves it closer to the light of his lamp.
“What’s your score?”
“Uh…” His eyes scan the page, darting around, struggling to fix to anything, until: “I think, one forty?”
There’s a beat. “What?”
He repeats it.
“Seriously?” Kim says, and it almost sounds like she’s about to laugh. “Jimmy, are you sure?”
He nods, then says, “Uh, yeah. Think so.”
There’s a strange noise from the headset, then—“Wait, did they change the system again?”
“What?”
“Did they change the scoring? When I sat it, it only went up to forty-eight.”
Jimmy laughs, bright and sharp. “What?” He runs his thumb over his lip again, then drops his hand.
“Yeah, forty-eight was as high as it went,” Kim says.
He huffs, shaking his head. “So you don’t even know if this is good or bad?”
“No clue,” Kim says. “Do you?”
“Not really,” he says. But then he swallows, and softer, and more honestly: “I mean, I don’t think it’s great.”
There’s a pause. The phone line crackles. “No?” she says, finally, and then, “Well, it’s a first step, Jimmy.”
“Yeah,” he says quietly.
Another silence, more humming of the phone line. “Hell, you got a higher score than me.”
He chuckles, raspy in his throat.
And her voice is right against his ear: “So congratulations.”
Something swells in his chest, tight near his ribcage. He sets his beer on the bedside table then tips back against the bed, falling softly onto the pillows. “I think it’s a pretty shit result, you know, Kim,” he says, lifting the letter, looking at the horizontal band that has his grade way off to the left. “I think it’s really, really bad.”
“Yeah?” she says, and her voice is warm still, somehow, careful.
“Yeah,” he says, but then he laughs again, giddy, and she laughs with him, and he lies there with his phone pressed against his ear and his other palm behind his head, his fingers laced through his hair, laughing and taking balancing step after balancing step out onto the ice.
| [ [_prev chapter<< _] ] | [ [_index_] ] | [ [_>>next chapter_] ] |