Ben Winters - Countdown City

“No.” He peels the wadded paper towel from his forehead and bobbles it from hand to hand. “Not really.”

“But he was a friend?”

“Well, like a, a work friend, you know? From the restaurant.”

“You worked together often?”

“Yeah. Definitely. More before the stupid fucking asteroid.”

I smile. A certain vividness absent from our current environment . Stupid fucking asteroid.

“At first I thought he was boring, you know? Kind of a goody-goody. He’s religious, he’s doesn’t drink, he’s the boss’s son-in-law, all that.”

I don’t have a notebook down here. No pencil. I’m nodding slowly, registering details, demanding of my midnight mind that it pay attention, catalog and order these incoming facts.

“But hanging out with Brett, you’d suddenly go: oh. This guy’s cool. He’d make these weird jokes all the time, like under his breath, when you’re driving around. Smart jokes, like where you don’t get it exactly but you know it’s brilliant. He’d help you do shit you were bad at, without making you feel stupid.”

I nod. I have known people like that, but for some reason the person who comes to mind is my grandfather Nathanael Palace, who raised Nico and me after the deaths of our parents, and who possessed the opposite sort of spirit: always ready to show you that you were bad at something, that you were doing it wrong.

“Me and Brett used to sit on my steps and watch them drive the—what do you call ’em, the trucks full of prisoners?—in and out of the jail.”

“Transport vans,” I say, shaking off the image of Grandfather, staying on target.

“Right, right. And Brett would point at the vans and say, ‘There but for the grace of God, my friend. There but for His grace.’ Like he cared about me, you know? Not just me, either. He cared about people in general.”

“And…” I pause, turn this over. “Did Brett talk about leaving? Going Bucket List, I mean?”

Jeremy looks down. His cheeks color. “Shit, man. You ask a lot of questions.”

“It’s in my nature. Did he talk about it or not?”

“No,” he says. “Not specifically. But he was ready to go. You know?”

“Did he have a girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. No.”

“You don’t know, or no?”

“Maybe he did,” says Jeremy. “I think so, maybe, yeah.”

“What girl?” I lean forward, my heart racing now, galloping. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” he says, pulling back, recoiling from my eagerness. “I don’t know.”

“Was there a girl who came in to the pizza place?”

“No. I don’t know.”

He does know, though. He knows something. But he’s not going to tell me, not now. I rub my eyes with my fingertips. There’s something else that’s been on my mind. “Brett was a solid goody-goody, you said, religious. How did he feel about Rocky working off-ERAS?”

“What?” He looks puzzled, upset.

“I mean, sending him to the rummage, black-marketing?”

“Wait,” says Jeremy suddenly, and slaps a flat hand on the table. “Stop. Look.”

And then my anxious night visitor is talking so fast and so ardently that his mouth is like a blur in the darkness on the other side of the table. “If he wanted to go off and sow some wild oats or whatever, then he didn’t have to, like, get anyone’s permission.”

“Not even his wife?”

“No, not even his wife. I don’t know about you, man, but I don’t have the balls to just go off and do what I want. Whether it’s a chick, or parasailing, or I don’t know—whatever. Even now, I don’t have the courage.” Jeremy shakes his head in bitter self-recrimination, as if this is the ultimate character flaw, this lack of apocalyptic bravery. “But it looks like Brett did have the balls, right? And like I said, he was—he was just a solid citizen. So he should get to do what he wants, is all I’m saying. And I don’t think you or Martha or anyone should go off and try and drag him back.”

He tosses the blood-soaked paper towel on the table and pushes back his chair.

“That’s it, man. I’m sorry to bother you.”

He stands up. I stand up. “I have more questions.”

“Sorry about your neighbor’s thing, too. On the lawn. I’m really sorry.”

And that’s it, he’s out the door, and given that I am no longer vested with any powers by the city of Concord to make him stay, I just watch him go, stumbling away in the darkness, a flashlight beam bobbling unevenly through the dark shapes of the trees. I’m contemplating the force of personality that my missing man must have possessed, to inspire the intense, if peculiar, devotion I’ve just seen. This kid may feel that he lacks courage, but he took a not-insignificant cross-city walk just now, in the unprotected darkness, to argue his friend’s case. Because he admires him. Because he wishes he had gone off somewhere, too.

I go into the living room, carrying a candle on a plate like a Dickens character, and when I find a pencil and my notebook I write down what I remember, write as swiftly and carefully as I can: a chick? parasailing? Kind of a goody-goody . I sketch the tale of Jeremy’s childhood, write down his full name and stare at it. Such an old-fashioned term he used, sow some wild oats . “If he wanted to sow some wild oats or whatever…”

When I’m done writing I lay down the pencil and stare into the flickering candle flame. The big question remains the one I asked Martha, twelve hours ago or however long ago it was: What do I do if I find him? If Jeremy is right, if Brett is out there sowing oats, and if I do by some miracle manage to track down this formidable character, this former state trooper—what then? I stroll up to this adult man doing what he pleases with his remaining scraps and shards of time, and say what, exactly?

My name is Henry Palace, sir. Your wife would like you to please come home now .

I blow out the candle.

I tiptoe past my sleeping dog and hang my long legs over the edge of the sofa and close my eyes.

The memories well up as they always do, and I push them away.

These are the scenes that I have studiously blocked, and which I am aware that I have blocked. Not of my parents; my dead parents I have lived with for many years now, and I have integrated their absence and my grief deep into my character. But there is a more recent wound, a woman named Naomi whom I loved and who was torn from me, a loss as sudden and brutal as a gunshot in a darkened room. And I am aware that the appropriate thing to do, from a therapeutic perspective, would be to summon up the relevant memories, allow myself to face the trauma, expose it to the light and allow time to do its healing work.

But there is no time. Seventy-seven days—seventy-six now—less than three months—who’s counting? There is no time.

I push away the memories, roll over, and think about my case.

“Oh, sure, I know him. Serious man. Broad shoulders. Boots.”

“That’s right,” I say, holding up the photograph, my missing man and his caught fish. “His name is Brett Cavatone.”

“If you say so. I don’t think we ever got so far as to names.”

The dairyman is an old New England farmer from a storybook, John Deere cap pushed back, sunburned forehead, crags beneath his eyes like coastal cliffs. I’m in his stall in one crowded corner of the Elks rummage, him behind his rickety card table, handwritten signs, a couple of ice-packed travel coolers as big as steamer trunks.