Соавторы: Katrina Onstad
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
But oh well, he was in it now, hot with rage. Up close, James was surprised by Chuckles’s face. He had pcitured him as a kid, a know-nothing just out of trade school. Yet up close, the face was lined and browned, as if from some stain, like the hands of a leather dyer. And the guy was bigger, too, than James had supposed, as often seemed to be the case at moments like this, he noted to himself. And also, Chuckles looked angry. This anger, located mostly in the sneer of Chuckles’s lips, snuffed any small hope in James that this might go a different way (A surprise friendship from across the divide? A human interest story on the local news?). No, Chuckles did not like to have his paper shuffling interrupted, or his cigarette. This much was clear.
But what else? What next? James was now upon his enemy empty-handed, without a plan. His entire body tingled. He would, then, improvise.
“Sorry to bother you,” he said, a phrase that he knew did not match the previous furious shoeless strut across the street, the door slamming and knuckle rapping. James’s voice, too, wasn’t quite as loud or manly as he’d anticipated, but instead sounded, even to his own blood-rushed ears, like a little French schoolgirl buying a croissant from a friendly baker. It was in this dulcet tone that James delivered his kicker: “You’re taking up two parking spots. Do you think you could move up?”
Now James waited. The truck leaked a prickly odor of cigarette and rust. Chuckles took one final drag and James waited for the Bazooka Joe finale, the stream of smoke blown in his face. Instead, Chuckles turned and exhaled on the passenger seat.
Then he turned back to James and said: “You the guy who left the note?” His voice was firm, with a vaguely Godfatherish tinge.
Did he? Did he leave it? James hurried through his thoughts. If he answered yes, then that door might open and James might get picked up by his belt loop and hung from the branches of the nearby oak tree. If no, then James had officially slapped down his admission to an amusement park only for pussies, where the rides were slow and low to the ground and the seatbelts thick and castrating. He made a quick decision.
“Yeah, that was me,” said James.
Chuckles’s eyes narrowed. “Why didn’t you sign it?”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you sign it?”
James considered this question and how it firmly located him on the wrong side of reason. If he had signed the note, he would not be here now. The whole thing could have been resolved at the kitchen island over one of Ana’s perfect espressos. But no, he had not put his name on it, had, in fact hidden, once again, behind his little pen and his paper, his tiny ideas, his life of distant reportage.
James elected not to answer the question.
“The point is, you have a garage, and we don’t. Why don’t you use it?” His squeak grew fuller, if not deeper, and the little French girl in him whined: “Show some respect for your neighbors! Show it! Show it!” The last words sputtered and landed on a face, one that was suddenly up against James’s, a large hamburger face attached to a larger neck and a body that had exited the car so swiftly, James had barely seen it happen. Chuckles was wearing steel-toed work boots as tall as downhill ski boots, and one of them was on James’s right argyle foot, grinding down.
“Respect this, cocksucker,” said Chuckles, not living up to his nickname, grinding James’s right foot like it was an un-snuffable cigarette butt. James closed his eyes and let the heat pour over his toes, smelling Chuckles’s meaty breath, waiting it out.
His work done, Chuckles stepped back and slammed his door shut. He leaned against the car, crossing his arms as James limped slowly into the road, backing away.
“It’s”—he squeaked—“about … courtesy!”
Chuckles barked a laugh and shouted: “This is what you have to worry about? Don’t you have a fucking family, cocksucker? Go worry about your family!”
“The social contract!” called James, limping toward the island of his porch, where he leaned on a post to straighten up, trying to keep his crippled foot tucked beneath him. Something moved in the picture window, a blur of blond hair. Finn had not been sleeping, then. James shut his eyes against that reality.
“Have a nice day, cocksucker!” yelled Chuckles as James opened his door, suggesting that he, James, had earned his own nickname. Cocksucker and Chuckles: the sitcom no one wanted to see.
The orange tin bird that Ana had hung in the center of the door swung on its discreet nail.
Inside, James turned the lock and inserted the chain. He hobbled to the living room and immediately saw Finn, rigid and upright on the couch, staring at him.
“Who that guy?” said Finn, pointing out the window, a look of grave concern on his face. “Who?”
James sank down next to Finn, his foot throbbing. “It’s no one. It’s a guy. A neighbor,” he said. Finn looked down at James’s foot and made a sound like a lion tearing meat. “Grrr!” he said. James tried to smile, but pain shot through his leg. At his wince, Finn returned to his look of fear.
“It’s okay, Finn,” he said. And he tried to conjure up some of the anger that had taken him over there in the first place, but he couldn’t touch it. “I did a stupid thing.”
Finn looked at him. “Why?”
In lieu of answering that particular question, James echoed something he’d seen a large purple puppet utter during a children’s show on the same public television station that had fired him: “ ‘It’s not right to fight. It’s better to use your words.’ ” Finn had a look of incredulousness on his face that struck James as extremely mature.
James picked up the remote control and found an attractive young Asian woman in a cape and bodysuit singing a song about recycling. The effect was instant; Finn turned to stone, mouth slack in the television’s glow.
Grasping the handrail, James pulled himself to the bedroom, opening the door to the strange midday darkness of the ill. Ana rattled in her chest as she slept. The room smelled of sick breath and orange juice.
James clumped past the bed to the bathroom. He turned on the light and shut the door, perching on the edge of the bathtub. He pulled his sock from his foot. The sole of the sock was thick with dirt, specks of mysterious gelatin and baby stones. His toes, as they emerged, were grotesque, red and swelling before his eyes like sea anemones. Only the little one looked undamaged and pale up against its expanding siblings.
“Ana,” he whimpered. She would know what to do: ice and peroxide and bandages. But she remained in her bed, burdened by her own illness. She was dreaming of the Max Klinger painting on Mike’s coffee table; she could hear the crunching of the grass as the man stole away, baby in arms. She could feel the mother breathing, but not waking. She tried to rouse her, to step into the painting from the outside and shake the mother awake: Tend to your disaster! she wanted to scream, but she could not make a sound, and she could not wake herself, either. She was trapped in the four borders of the gray and white idyll.
“Ana,” called James, but softly, too, wanting her to sleep and wanting her to wake and care for him, wanting it both ways, always, again.
Halloween Day
ON HALLOWEEN MORNING, Ana left for an early meeting while the house still slept.
James awoke to Finn next to him in bed, wide-eyed.
“Hey, man,” said James, reaching for him. “How long have you been there?”
“Long.”
After breakfast, James wedged Finn into his panda suit, slipping black rain boots over the paws. The suit was too fluffy and the boots too small, and Finn looked like an inflated toy from the knees up.
“Too tight!” said Finn.
James went to the kitchen for scissors. He removed Finn’s boots, and the boy sat on his bottom with his legs in James’s lap expectantly.
“This will be better. You can just put the legs on the outside of the boots.…” James strained as he cut open the bottom of the panda suit, aware of the blades slicing close to the small toes in their bright red socks.
James put a ski jacket over the top of Finn’s panda suit. At every house, the boy stopped, running up strangers’ staircases to examine pumpkins on stoops. James dragged his injured foot, trying to keep up.
A paper skeleton attached to a door made him scream: “Dead!” And then he laughed. James called Finn back, calming him, then watching him sprint away again.
Finally at the door of the daycare room, James released Finn, and the boy ran as if unhooked from a leash. Colored pictures of bats lined one wall; white paper ghosts made of tissue paper balls hung from the ceiling. Across the room, Bruce, two silver hoops replacing the gold ones, smiled his mournful, supportive smile and waved at James.
As he waved back, James’s BlackBerry beeped. The sound had become less and less frequent over the past weeks. Exiting the daycare, James looked at it: Fun night. Going to The Ossington @ 10. Halloweeeeeen. Em.
He walked to the row of cafés, selecting the one with the unflattering mirror above his bald spot. James left his hat on and ordered a coffee and sank into a chair at the window. With his laptop open, he became one of several men gently clicking away. Then he pulled out Finn’s picture, the mouthless boy floating in space. He stared at it for a long time. He wanted to hold Finn, wanted his body close to him.
Then he began to write. It made no sense, what he was writing. There was no money in it. There was barely a story. But he felt clear. He was writing at last. And he continued to write and, in doing so, forgot about Emma and the green door that held her in, just across the street from where he was writing his confession.
Leaving the café, he deleted her text.
On the walk home, James, tingling with accomplishment, stopped in a small CD store, a place where he had spent a few hours a week only a decade ago. He didn’t recognize the name of one single band in the window. It had happened, then; he was not just outside the loop, the loop was unrecognizable to him, a new shape entirely.
The girl behind the counter was difficult to take in all at once. She had a metal stud in her chin, another in her lip. Black eyeliner seeped into her acne. She wore black leather cycling gloves.
To this, James posed the question: “Do you have any children’s music?” She smiled, then, not bored, not angry, but young, very young and pretty under the armor.
“Sure. Follow me.” The children’s section was small, a single row underneath CONSIGNMENT.
“These guys are awesome. Local. This is a compilation, money goes to fighting poverty or something.” She pulled discs out one by one.
“I’m looking for a specific song. It has the word ‘light’ in it.”
The girl laughed. “That’s all you know? Who wrote it?”
“That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know. This kid I know keeps requesting it. A song about light.”
“Man! That’s insane!” Still, she divided the row into two stacks and handed James half. They put their legs out in front of them, the discs in between like they were dividing Halloween candy. “Light … light …” she muttered. At the end of ten minutes, they each had three discs with songs containing the word “light” in the title.
“Thank you,” said James, pulling himself to standing.
As she bagged the discs, she said from her black chapped lips: “Thanks. That was fun, sir.”
Ana had missed three days of work. This long an absence was unprecedented, a fact underlined for her by others several times during the day. In a meeting, Christian’s small, loud greeting: “Nice of you to join us. How was Aruba?” But the evidence against Aruba was in the looking; Ana was pale, thinner. The skin around the bottom of her nose glowed, ravaged and peeling, its redness unsuccessfully damped down by copious amounts of foundation and concealer. But even tired and only slightly recovered, Ana fell deeply into her work, investigating soybean seeds spliced in laboratories, impervious to disease, and twice as expensive as regular seeds. Genetically modified. Ana typed the phrase eight times in one hour.
As a researcher, Ana could pluck the legal issues from any subject she was assigned like a butcher removing the feathers from a dead chicken. But the substance of the question only appeared to her when she stopped to blow her nose. She thought of the wands the doctors had put inside her, the confidence that her body could make something of itself. The doctors were certain that life could be inserted, removed, that pieces could be implanted in other people’s bodies, in other people’s lives, and that this future was something everyone could live with. But she had heard the weeping woman in the room next to hers at the fertility clinic, absorbing the bad news of another wasted round of carefully placed embryos. Ana was suspicious.
She had consented to the treatments, but had she ever really felt the need, the urgency? She couldn’t remember. James had felt it. He was rushing to the petri dish; he was desperate to keep existing. Maybe that’s the difference between us, she thought.
At four o’clock, Rick Saliman appeared in her doorway.
Sitting himself down without invitation, he said: “Croissants. Café au lait. St. Laurent Boulevard. Bagels.” Ana nodded. She had long ago realized that speaking as little as possible around Rick was the best strategy. He would simply pile on top of her words anyway. “Have you ever been to Saint Joseph’s Oratory? People throw down their crutches and crawl to the top of the dome on their knees.” Rick was enormous. He crossed his legs in the little chair. Ana felt as if a dinosaur had entered her office.
“I’ve never been there,” said Ana.
“To Montreal?”
“No, the Oratory.”
“Me neither,” he said. “We need bodies in Montreal. They’re struggling since the restructuring.”
“Bodies?”
“Your body, Ana. Would you consider it? They’re desperate for a first-class researcher. A transfer? Not permanent, just six months or so. Unless you wanted it to be permanent.”
“I don’t—”
“It’s a given that you’re beyond capable. But you’re also mobile. With James working on his book, no kids—it’s an opportunity.”
“Opportunity” was another word for “chance.” Ana felt that she had a very close relationship to chance these days. Futures kept raining down on her like cold hard pellets, scattering this way and that. She was not sure which way to look anymore. She liked the idea of making a decision one way or another. She liked the idea of croissants and a city without her childhood in it.
“Can you outline in more detail—” she began.
“The proposal. Of course,” said Rick. “I’ll e-mail it to you this afternoon.”
He stood up, broadening as he did.
“I can’t say this officially, of course, but I believe this is the fastest way to equity partnership for you,” he said. “I think you could expect that within a year, pending review.”
Ana nodded. This was what she had wanted. It looked duller up close.
“You’ve been away,” said Rick at the door.
“I’ve been sick.” Ana said it quickly.
“Nothing serious, I hope?” The inquiry was a rough, ill-fitting effort, a delicate glass object in a big hand.
“Just a cold,” said Ana. But his point had been made. The afternoon cleaning Sarah’s house; the illness. These were to be the last absences. She was being as measured and monitored as a parolee. She needed to be in the chair.
At 5:30, as the room darkened, Ana turned on her desk lamp and watched the man in the tower opposite hers reach around to turn off his computer. He buttoned his coat and flipped up the collar. Then, with his hand on the door and his back to Ana, he froze for a moment, as if steeling himself. He stood like that for long enough that Ana felt embarrassment and looked away, checking her e-mail for the first time in an hour.
Subject: You should know
She clicked.
I’m writing you this because I think you deserve to know. Your husband is not a good man. Ask him about the girl in the black coat. Your being made a fool of. I think you deserve to know but Im sorry to tell it to you like this.
Signed,
A Friend
Ana’s practical sense took over even as her emotions drained out of her body. She checked the return address—a 1234 Google account. Garbage. Then she read it again, annoyed by the spelling and grammar. For all the appearance of intrigue, it wasn’t much of a mystery, really, she thought, as she fumbled for her coat, her fingers sticking on the buttons, her breath short.
Where did Ruth sit? she wondered. She came out of her office. Most desks still had people at the helm, bent and clicking keyboards, murmuring into headsets. A few were in the process of gathering their things to leave. She gazed across the room to the small, exposed cubicle in the center. Ruth’s cardigan hung over the back of her chair, but her lamp and computer were off. The girl was gone.
A hand touched her elbow.
“Who are you looking for?” asked Elspeth.
Ana shook her head, offered a smile. “No one. I think I should go.”
“Lucky you,” said Elspeth. “I’m here all night. I just lost one third of my team.”
“Who?”
“Do you remember that blond girl? Sort of pointy?”
“From the party.”
“Right. Erin. She quit. She’s pregnant, so she quit. Can you imagine? The arrogance! She’s going to lose her mind. She has no idea what’s in store.”
Ana nodded. She began to cough violently, retreating to her office. She found her briefcase and, turning out her light, stopped and looked again out the window at the office opposite hers. She half expected the man to be standing there still caught in his reverie, but the lights in his office were out. Ana clicked off her own.
She decided to walk home, in the direction of the hospital. Ana couldn’t see the need for drama, for the rush home in the taxi. This uninvited e-mail would not ruin her plan for the early evening.
The sun had set, and once in a while she passed an office worker in costume: A witch carried a briefcase in one hand. A man in a suit wore devil horns.
The lobby of the hospital was crowded with people in face masks, and at first, Ana thought this was simply a part of Halloween. Then she realized they were real; was there a new infection for her to be afraid of? She couldn’t muster anxiety over theoretical viruses, even when the security guard insisted she accept a squirt of hand sanitizer. In the crowded elevator, every person but Ana had a white cotton mask across the mouth, staring straight ahead. Ana coughed. Around her, eyes cringed.
Ana found Sarah’s room easily. The other beds in the ward were empty; one was stripped to the mattress, another was missing an occupant but maintained the veneer of a dorm room, with magazines caught in the sheets and photos taped above the bed. Fresh flowers sat on the bedside table.
Sarah’s table was empty.
Ana’s eyes followed the path of the tube jutting from Sarah’s neck collar to the machine, blurting its rising and falling noises. Her jaw hung open, dry at the corners. But the stitches were gone, leaving a web of pale red lines.
Ana removed from her bag the two framed photos of Finn she had taken from Sarah and Marcus’s house those weeks ago. She placed them on the table next to the bed, adjusted the pictures so Finn was facing Sarah. Ana pulled a chair from the wall and moved close to the bed. It wasn’t only work that had kept her from the hospital until now. What she had feared the most was exactly what she felt, finally sitting next to her friend: that Sarah was a sign of Finn’s future sadness. This barely breathing body was an absence that Finn would have to endure, and Ana and James would never be enough to soothe that agony. All the warm rooms and square meals would never stand in for this body that made him, that loved him from that first breath.
Ana smoothed the sheet by Sarah’s face, pressing down on the cool mattress. She remembered the warm chaos of Sarah’s house, the dirt and disorder and Sarah’s huge, unplugged laugh. She wanted to tell her about the madness in her own life, but it was nothing compared to the madness that was waiting for Sarah if she awoke. She should tell her about Finn instead. But there was too much to tell, and around her, from the hallway, the murmurs of the ill.
Instead, Ana whispered: “I can’t do it.” And then: “I don’t want to do it.” And then: “I miss you.”
She leaned down and left a small kiss on her friend’s forehead.
“I’m sorry,” said Ana.
A nurse entered, black hair in cornrows.
“Are you James’s wife?” she asked. Ana startled at the familiarity, wiping her eyes.
“Yes.”
“She’s doing much better,” said the nurse. “Look.” Ana looked down at the bed. The second finger on Sarah’s right hand moved slightly, as if beckoning her. Ana gasped. The finger went flat again.
“She can hear you. At least, I think she can, and so does your husband,” said the nurse. “Your husband was right to hold off on moving her into long-term care.” Ana absorbed this information. She was quick to cover up her confusion—decisions, life-changing decisions had been made, and Ana, once again, not consulted.
“When was he—how often is he here?”
“He’s here every couple of days,” she said. “It does help her.”
Ana nodded. She pulled herself to a standing position, still nodding. The nurse suddenly seemed to realize that she may have betrayed a secret and mumbled a few incomprehensible words before rushing from the room.
Holding herself steady, Ana closed the door hard. Her vision blurry, she banged into the nurses’ desk on her way down the hall, and a plastic pumpkin came tumbling to the ground. She kept walking.
James took the call as he walked toward the daycare. He had a video camera in one hand, the cell in the other. Doug announced himself in his usual way: “Jaaaaaames,” he said.
“Hi, Doug.”
“How goes it? You didn’t come to dinner.”
James was tempted to scurry for an excuse, but he didn’t. He thought about the CDs at home for Finn. He wanted to see if they could find the song. “Yeah, sorry, man. Ana’s been sick. It’s busy.”
He shouldn’t have worried; that part of the conversation had been pretense. Doug said: “I have a proposition for you.” The words came at him in the same kind of indecipherable rush that his firing had: “We’re doing this doc and we need a producer.” James was nearly at the daycare. He could hear the shouting of children in the yard, mismatched sounds of terror and laughter.
“You know what? I can’t talk right now—”
“Don’t you want to hear what it’s about? You’ll love this—”
James stopped him. “I’m picking up my—I’m picking up Finn right now. It’s Halloween. So can I call you back tomorrow? Is that cool?” The shrieking got louder. “Doug, you know what? You’re going out on me. This phone is shit. I’ll call you tomorrow. Thanks for thinking of me, man.”
Finn had his coat over his panda suit. He was waiting at the door for him, vibrating with excitement.
“Camera!” he called, pointing at the camera. James took his hand. They walked along the street quietly.
After a block, James said: “You know, I used to have a job. That’s a little factoid about me that you may not know.” He cautioned Finn to look both ways at the crosswalk. They continued on.
“I don’t know if I really want that job anymore. But today I was thinking: A camera is a very useful thing. Beautiful even. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather make a movie with. Do you want to make a movie?”
Finn looked up at him and nodded.
“Let’s make a movie,” said James.
All the way home, James took footage of Finn. Finn ran up staircases. Finn sat on a manhole. Finn kicked at leaves. He stopped every few minutes to look at James’s footage, entranced by his own image in the camera’s small window.
But when they got to the park, Finn stopped suddenly.
“What now?” he said.
James put the camera down on a picnic table and stood next to Finn, both caught in the camera’s square eye.
“Now this!” And James beat his chest and began yelling up to the sky. “RARARRARA!” A few trick-or-treaters ran past, giggling, trailed by a mother who glanced at James nervously. James jumped up and down. “RARARARARRR!” he screamed. He made gorilla sounds, scratching his armpits and leaping in the air. Finn looked up at him, grinning. “RARARA!” said Finn. He beat his own small hands against his panda chest and ran around James in circles. “RARARRAR!” he called, too, circling and circling and circling.
Halloween Night
IT HAPPENED BECAUSE the door was open. The sun had just set and the trick-or-treaters arrived immediately, released with the darkness. A baby butterfly in the arms of her father. A trio of Chinese kids on the verge of adolescence who hadn’t bothered with costumes.
“Do a trick,” James demanded. The kids looked at him blankly. Finally, the tallest one began singing “Happy Birthday” in a thick accent. James cut him off.
“Never mind. Forget it.” James handed each of them two miniature chocolate bars from a blue glass bowl.
The doorbell kept ringing. James decided to prop it open with a chair, leaving the bowl of candy on top.
“Ready!” said Finn. It was true. He stood in front of James, arms at his side, grinning broadly, his face shrunken by the fluffiness of the panda hood. The legs hung over the boots, raggedy and odd.
“I’ve got to take a leak. I’ll be right back,” said James.
Finn hopped on the couch and stared out the window at the creatures on parade in the falling dark. James was gone for less than a minute—forty seconds? Thirty seconds? He would be asked for the exact number of seconds several times. He zipped up his fly as he emerged from the bathroom below the stairwell. No, he had not washed his hands, because he was rushing, because he was aware of the boy alone.
“Ready, Freddy? Let’s get some loot!” He emerged into the living room to find the white leather couch empty.
“Finny?” called James. He moved quickly through the rooms, his eyes landing on the open front door. A Spider-Man appeared in the space, his finger on the bell.
James shoved past him and onto the porch.
“Trick—”
“Just take it,” said James. He looked down at a mother on the sidewalk.
“Did you see a panda? I can’t find my—there’s a boy—he’s two—” The woman shook her head.
“Your son?”
James didn’t answer. “He’s in a panda costume—” James said this as he walked backward into the house. “Finn! Finny!” He began opening cupboards, closets. Without hesitating, the woman followed James inside.
“When did you last see him?” she called to James, who had sprinted up the staircase. The woman crouched down, checking under the couch. Spider-Man, a few years older than Finn, opened closets and cupboards, too, following James’s lead.
“I’ll check the basement. Is your wife here?” the woman called up the stairs. James peered down at her, a stranger with a kind, unyielding look, the firmness of a beloved librarian.
“She’s on her way home from work. Yes, yes, check the basement.”
She did that, too—How long? How long these footsteps?—and returned to the main floor.
“Upstairs again,” said James. He led her up to the long, dark floors of the hall, into the white bedroom.
The woman said: “You have a beautiful home. It’s so clean!” Then she put her hands to her mouth. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate.”
“It’s fine.” James had a sensation in his stomach of bread leavening, something expanding, moving up into his chest.
Spider-Man followed, homing in on the guest bedroom that was only half transformed into a child’s room. He picked up Finn’s Moo blanket, twirling it around by the head. Quickly, his mother pulled it from his hand and laid it across the quilt.
“I’m calling my husband,” she said, pulling a cell phone from her jacket.
James nodded. Finn could not be found. The house was stuffed with his absence. James could smell him, peppery and sweet; he could hear him howling outside to come back in, straining at the windows. He put his hands out for his hair, his warm skin—and then dropped them to his sides.
James ran outside, jogged up the street calling: “Finn! Finn!” Small children moved aside, and he leaned down, walking crouched, trying to see their faces, to see through the masks and hoods. None was Finn. James went the other way, south, weeding through the bodies. He was out of breath, sweating in the cold. None was Finn.
James ran back to his porch, certain Finn would be there, waiting, but there was only a man on the front steps, hulking and peering through the open door. Chuckles. Spider-Man clung to his leg.
“My wife called me,” he said.
A stream of fairies and princesses moved up the stairs. The sun had set now; the sky was black. The trick-or-treaters wore bright armbands on their wrists and ankles. Some waved glow sticks, artifacts from parties James had once attended. Spider-Man passed out candy from Ana’s bowl.
James could not meet Chuckles’s eyes. He began to speak, tumbling: “He was here. I went to the bathroom—”
“Do you have a picture?”
James nodded. He floated up to the guest room and took the photo of Finn with Marcus and Sarah that rested on the bedside table, a boy being hugged on both sides by his mother and father. He glanced at it, at the breadth of Finn’s smile. He went into the bedroom and grabbed his camera, too, with the footage from the afternoon.
Chuckles said nothing about the parents in the picture.
“My buddy’s a cop. Hang on.” He dialed his cell phone, speaking into the earpiece that was permanently clipped to his skull like a hearing aid.
