Truth in Advertising Page 0,74

glares at me across the table.

Eddie says, “Whatever. I don’t really give a fuck.”

Maura says, “Language.”

I form my response and then tell myself not to say it but I say it anyway, as if I’m out of control, on a bad adrenaline rush. I’m running my tongue against the back of my lower teeth like I’m on coke. My neck is hot.

I say, “You’re asking a lot of questions for someone who doesn’t care.”

I can smell booze on Eddie’s breath, even from where I sit. He stopped for one on the way, perhaps the only way to face us, to face this. I’m four seconds away from walking out. This is why we never see each other. Because every time we do we revisit the past and sit in it, unable to do anything but flail and scream and injure ourselves. So much of our conversation is unsaid, spoken so long ago. We have nothing in common but a last name and a history that won’t let us go.

Again, I say the words without thinking. “Why weren’t you there? Why weren’t either of you there?”

They look at me like the witnesses must have looked at Eichmann on trial. Eddie, leaning across the table, face contorted. “Because he was a fucking prick, that’s why. Because he killed . . .”

“Stop it.” Maura.

If you dropped the ambient noise you’d hear the three of us breathing heavily.

The waiter has a smile like he’s trying out for a Broadway show.

“How are we all this evening? I’m Gareth and I would love to tell you about our specials . . .”

I cut him off. “Hi. Sorry. We’re actually waiting on one more person. Maybe we could hear those in a bit.”

We sit in silence, waiting for the night to be over. I’m staring at the ceiling, so I don’t see Kevin walk in. He looks at the three of us, reads our faces.

“I see we’ve already begun.”

• • •

I oversleep and have to walk quickly to the lawyer’s office for the reading of the will. I pass a bank clock on the way and the readout says it is twenty-one degrees. The bellhop says I can get there faster on foot than by cab at this time of morning in this part of town. I get lost. The streets are a labyrinth in the old part of the city and I end up at the water twice. I’m frozen and stop in at a coffee shop, a pre-Starbucks time capsule.

There’s a Formica counter at which sits a handful of men who look like they’ve worked a nightshift, drinking bottles of Miller High Life. There is an older woman wearing two overcoats stirring her coffee and putting packet after packet of sugar into it. She has a newspaper folded to the crossword puzzle. “I read two hundred books a year,” she says to the newspaper. “I’m a writer and a poet and I’ve had my books published. In Israel. A rose is a rose is a rose. Who said that?”

I order a coffee to go for warmth more than anything else, and my cell phone rings. The display reads Amy Deacon.

“Amy,” I say rather cleverly. I’m in a mild state of shock. We’ve spoken once in eight months. That call did not go well. A call initiated by me, “checking in.” A mistake, having done what I did. I did it to assuage my guilt, she said.

Also, I’m not sure if it’s a general low-grade nervousness in my gut or the particularly potent coffee I gulped in the lobby of the hotel on my way out, but yet again my lower intestinal tract is warming up for what appears to be an Irish jig and I fear a Four Seasons–like toilet at this establishment is out of the question. The men laugh and one says, “Sully, you’re such an asshole.” Only “asshole” comes out “ahhs-hole.”

Amy says, “Hi, Fin.” I smile at the high pitch, the kindness in her voice. The older woman with two coats now seems to be staring at my crotch. I make a quick tactile examination of the area to make sure my fly is up and I’ve not accidentally urinated on myself, though to be frank, in my current state of lower intestinal agitation, I sense my penis retracting like wheels after takeoff.

“How are you?” she says.

We’d met on a plane. I was on my way to Cincinnati for a client meeting. Amy was headed to a conference on trauma therapy. A