Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“And I never knew how many, or who they were. That one boy, on the basis of the look on his face, but which of the others? Not that I spent a lot of time thinking about it. And I certainly didn’t let myself think about the consequences.”

“Of losing the game?”

“Of doing what I was doing and getting caught at it. It was a crime, you know.”

“I guess it must have been.”

“Oh, no question. There’d been some scandals a few years earlier. A fair number of young men had their lives ruined, and a few went to prison for it. I didn’t worry about it, and it turned out there was nothing to worry about.”

“What happened to the money?”

“Nothing for a couple of years. Then when your mother and I got married, we had expenses. Young couples always do. So the money came in handy after all.”

“Did Mom know where it came from?”

“All she knew was that the bills got paid. Nobody knew that I shaved points. Until tonight, I never said a word about it to anyone.”

“It’s hard to believe,” Kevin Parmalee said, after a moment. “Not that you never said anything, but that you did it. It seems—”

“What?”

“Out of character, I guess.”

“It seemed that way to me at the time. I don’t know that I can explain it. Maybe Harold was a persuasive guy, or maybe I was easily persuaded.”

“How come — no, never mind.”

“What?”

“I just wondered how come you decided to tell me.”

“I hadn’t planned on it.”

“Really? Because I had the sense there was something.”

“There was, but that wasn’t it.”

“Oh?”

“If I’d called for my pipe,” Richard Parmalee said, “I could fuss with it, and tamp the tobacco down and relight it, and kill a surprising amount of time that way. Sometimes I think that was as much of an addiction as the nicotine. I went to the doctor about six weeks ago for my annual physical, which is a misnomer, because I’m doing well if I get around to it every other year. He called me two days later to tell me my PSA was a little high, if you know what that is.”

“I don’t.”

“You probably will in a few years. I forget what it stands for, but it’s a prostate test. A slight elevation could be the result of enlargement of the prostate, or a sign of the presence of a low-grade infection. Or it could be an indication of early-stage prostate cancer.”

The two men looked at each other. “So he sent me to a urologist,” Richard Parmalee went on, “and he did his own examination and his own test, and put me on an antibiotic for a week in case it was an infection that was causing the high reading. And a week later he took blood for another test, and the result was still the same, so he had me come in for a biopsy.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s a goddam undignified procedure,” he said, “but less painful than a sprained ankle, and you don’t need an Ace bandage. You have blood in the urine for a few days afterward, and in the semen for up to a month. All of that’s nothing compared to waiting for the lab results. I had the biopsy on a Tuesday and I didn’t hear until the following Monday. Not to keep you in suspense, it came back negative. I haven’t got cancer.”

“Thank God.”

“I suppose I could have said that right off,” Richard Parmalee said, “but instead I let you wait and wonder for what, five minutes? If that. Well, that was to give you an idea. I had a full month to wait and wonder, and maybe you can imagine what that was like.”

“You never said anything.”

“There was nothing to say, not until I found out what I had or didn’t have.”

“Did Mom know?”

“I told her the morning I went in for the biopsy. If it was just an infection, or a false positive, why put her through it? By the time I was ready to go in for the procedure, I figured she ought to know. And I was worn out keeping it to myself.”

“But you’re all right?”

“I have to go in every six months,” he said, “for a PSA, which just means they take some blood and send it to the lab. If there’s no change, all I do is make another appointment. It’s normal for the level to increase gradually with age. If that’s all it does, that’s fine. If there’s a big increase, I get to have another biopsy.”

“Every six months for how long?”

“For as long as possible.”

“For as long as... oh, I get it. In other words, every six months for the rest of your life.”

“And I hope that’s a long time. That’s one of the things I found out while I was waiting. I didn’t want it to be over. If I have to get a needle in my arm twice a year, well, that’s a pretty small price to pay to stick around.”

“I’ll say.”

“But from this point on my life is different. All of a sudden I’m an old man.”

“The hell you’re an old man.”

“I was a kid with a basketball, and the next thing I know I’m an old fart with a prostate. Well, what’s the difference? Either way you dribble.”

They laughed, the two of them, a little more heartily than the line warranted, and when the laughter stopped they were silent. Then the older man said, “I knew I wanted to tell you. I wasn’t in a rush, but it was something you ought to know. Then you called to say you had Knicks tickets, and while I was making dinner reservations I decided it would be the right time and place for this conversation.”

“I’ll probably be a while taking it all in.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. Intimations of mortality, and your own as well as mine. I’m in damn good shape, I’m happy to say, but in a sense I feel a good deal more vulnerable than I did a couple of months ago. But there’s something I can’t quite figure out. What made me tell you about my little arrangement with Harold?”

“Maybe you were stalling.”

“Stalling? Telling you the one thing to delay telling you the other? No, I don’t think so. That would have been a reason for small talk, but I wasn’t making small talk.”

“No.”

“And it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. Would my life have been different if I’d told Harold thanks but no thanks?”

“How?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering. I did something that wasn’t honest, and I kept it a secret. How did that affect the choices I made in life?”

“Maybe it didn’t.”

“Maybe not,” Richard Parmalee said, “but I’ll never know, will I? The road not taken. Maybe it’s made a difference, and maybe it hasn’t.”

“Phil Carrigan called me in two, three weeks ago,” the son said. “I’d knocked myself out for him, and he wanted to let me know how much he appreciated it. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I owe you a big one. And Lisa, I want to make up to her for the extra hours you put in. Here’s what you do, Kevin. Take the lovely lady to Lutèce. You can bill the client.’ ”

“That’s perfect.”

“Isn’t it? His eyes, he was being magnanimous. Giving me something to show his appreciation of what I did for him. So I had his permission to stick it to the client for a couple of hundred dollars. That’s his idea of a grand gesture, and he really thought he was being generous. And maybe he was, because he could just as easily have taken his wife to Lutèce at the client’s expense.”

“That’s interesting. I’m not sure it fits with what we were talking about, but I’m not sure it doesn’t, either. How was the meal?”

“It was terrific, but I’m just as happy with a steak and salad, to tell you the truth.”

“You’re like your old man. And it’s time your old man headed home.”

He raised his hand for the check. “I wish you’d let me get this,” the son said.

“Not a chance. I told you, you got the tickets.”