particularly pleased with what he’d done. He still had some of their weed stored away; he’d been saving it for a special occasion, but now he was considering offering to share it with Grady if it would just get them away from Lester’s.
‘She’s okay,’ said Grady. ‘She misses my old man. They were always tight.’
‘You hear any word yet on what’s coming to you?’
Teddy knew that Harlan Vetters had split his worldly wealth evenly between his children. There wasn’t much money in the bank, but the house would be worth something, even in these hard times. It was a big old rambling place with a lot of land adjoining it, land that bled into the forest on three sides so that there was little chance of anyone building nearby. Harlan had kept it nice too, right until the end.
‘Marielle talked to the bank about taking a loan to buy me out, with the house as security.’
‘And?’
‘They’re still talking,’ said Grady, and his tone made it clear that it wasn’t a subject he wished to pursue.
Teddy took a long drag on his cigarette, right down to the filter. He’d heard whispers about this because his old buddy Craig Messer was engaged to a woman who worked as a teller at the bank, and this woman had said that Rob Montclair Jr, whose father managed the bank, didn’t care none for Grady Vetters, and was doing his damnedest to ensure that the bank didn’t go lending money to his sister. The reasons for his hatred were lost in the mists of high school, but that was the way of small towns: little hatreds had a way of lying dormant in their soil, and it didn’t take much to make them germinate. Marielle could go someplace else for a loan, but Teddy felt sure that the first thing she’d be asked was why she wasn’t talking to her own bank about this, and then someone from the second bank would call Rob Montclair Jr. or his poppa, and the whole sorry business would start over again.
‘You know, Teddy, I hate this place,’ said Grady.
‘I figured,’ said Teddy. He wasn’t resentful. Grady just saw Falls End differently. He always had.
‘I don’t know how you can stand to stay here.’
‘I ain’t got nowhere else to go.’
‘There’s a whole world out there, Teddy.’
‘Not for people like me,’ said Teddy, and the truth of it made him want to die.
‘I want to go back to the city,’ said Grady, and Teddy understood that this wasn’t a conversation between equals. Grady Vetters wasn’t just the center of his own universe, but a planet around which men like Teddy orbited adoringly. As far as changes in the direction of Grady Vetters’ conversation went, the best that his friend could hope for would be, ‘Enough about me, what do you think of me?’
‘Which city?’ said Teddy. Only a little of his resentment showed, not that Grady noticed.
‘Any city. Any place but here.’
‘Why don’t you, then? Go back to what you were doing and wait for the money to come.’
‘Because I need the money now. I got nothing. I been sleeping on couches and floors these past six months.’
This was news to Teddy. Last he heard, the whole art business had been paying well enough for Grady. He’d sold some paintings, and there were more commissions in the pipeline.
‘I thought you was doing okay. You told me that you’d sold some stuff.’
‘They didn’t pay much, Teddy, and I was spending it as soon as it came in. Sometimes before it came in. I had it bad for a while.’
This Teddy did know about. Heroin scared the shit out of him. Blow you could take or leave, but with heroin you were a full-blown, living-out-of-Dumpsters-and-selling-your-sister-for-quarters addict, although Teddy would have paid more than quarters for Marielle Vetters.
‘Yeah, but you’re all good now, right?’
‘Better,’ said Grady.
There was a frailty to how he said it that made Teddy fear for him.
‘Better than I was.’
‘That’s something,’ said Teddy, not sure what else to say. ‘Look, I know Falls End ain’t for you, but at least here you have a roof over your head, and a bed to sleep in, and people who’ll look out for you. If you got to wait a while for the money to come through, better here than on someone’s floor. It’s all relative, man.’
‘Yeah, all relative. Maybe you’re right, Teddy.’
He gripped the back of Teddy’s neck and smiled at him, and there was such sadness in his eyes that Teddy