Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

She held onto his hand just long enough to say, “I’m so very sorry about Steady and, God, you do look like him.”

“You’re very kind,” Haynes said.

“I left at seven this morning,” she said, turning to McCorkle. “I wanted to say good-bye to Steady at Arlington. But that piece of GM junk broke down again and by the time I got it fixed it was too late for Steady and too late to pick you up at Dulles. How’s Mutti bearing up under all the relatives?”

“Nobly” McCorkle said. “How’s school?”

“It’s over. Done with.”

“You quit?”

“Graduated.”

McCorkle looked at Haynes. “Can this be June?”

He smiled. “For some perhaps.”

“A diplomat” she said to Haynes and turned again to McCorkle. “My junior year?”

“At Heidelberg.”

“Well, there’s this very nice little man down in the basement of an administration building who, armed with nothing more than a Radio Shack computer, just happened to be running my midterm records through it and discovered I hadn’t been given nearly enough credits for the Heidelberg year. In fact, I have more than I need for a degree. So I said auf Wiedersehen and told them to mail me the diploma.”

McCorkle rose, went around the desk and gave his daughter a long hug. “I’m awfully damned proud of you.”

“You’re also off the fees and tuition hook.”

“And now your mother can have her warm winter coat.”

Her alarmingly sunny smile reappeared. “Where’s Mike?”

“He went for a swim,” McCorkle said. “Are you okay for dinner?”

“Of course. I only wish Mutti were here.”

“We’ll call her.”

“Around ten. It’ll be around three in the morning there. She’ll love that.”

His daughter went up on her toes to give McCorkle a quick kiss, turned to Haynes and said, “I’m glad we met. Steady spoke of you often.”

“I have to be going, too,” Haynes said.

“Can I give you a lift?”

He smiled then, the smile that McCorkle suspected could melt both rocks and female hearts. “If you’re heading out Connecticut.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

The sudden discomfort McCorkle felt as they left was in the region where his heart was supposed to be. For a moment he experienced a mild shortness of breath. The symptoms vanished as quickly as they came and McCorkle found himself hoping it was his first angina. If it weren’t, then he knew he had just suffered his first serious attack of male parentitis.

Padillo entered the office twenty minutes later to find McCorkle sitting at the partners desk, glumly drinking Irish whiskey.

“Somebody else die?” Padillo said as he located a glass and poured himself a measure of Bushmills.

“Childhood,” McCorkle said.

“Well, it couldn’t last forever — not even yours.”

“Erika’s. They somehow messed up her college credits and discovered she had more than enough to graduate now instead of in June. We’re celebrating tonight. You’re invited.”

“You’re sure it’s a celebration and not a memorial service?”

“You didn’t see the smile,” McCorkle said, once more staring into his glass.

“What smile?”

“The one Haynes gave her.”

“Ah. That one.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t worry,” Padillo said. “The Haynes kid is four or five times as smart as his old man ever was, which is very bright indeed, and maybe ten times as honest, which brings him up to about average. But if you really need something to brood about these long January nights, think on this: who does Granville Haynes remind you of — other than Steady? Take your time.”

McCorkle continued to stare down into his drink. He was still staring down into it fifteen seconds later when he said, “Of you.”

“And somebody else.”

“Who?”

“Yourself,” Padillo said.

McCorkle only grunted.

“Erika could do worse,” Padillo said.

McCorkle finally looked up. “How?”

They scarcely talked until Erika McCorkle stopped her five-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass for a red light at Connecticut and R. She indicated the venerable Schwartz drugstore on the intersection’s northwest corner and said, “I used to hang out there when I was a real little kid.”

“How little?” Haynes said.

“Six or seven. The world’s two fastest soda jerks worked there. One had a bad leg; the other had terribly crossed eyes and both must’ve been well over forty. Pop sometimes took me there for what he said were the best ice cream sodas in town. We’d sit at the fountain and watch the two guys work. God, they were fast. I remember Pop kept telling them they were an endangered species. Think they’re still there?”

“We could find out,” Haynes said.

“You’re serious?”

“Sure.”

As the light changed to green, Erika McCorkle spotted an empty metered parking space just south of Larimer’s market, raced a BMW for it and won. She stopped parallel with the car in front of the empty space, shifted into reverse, spun the steering wheel to the right, backed up, spun the steering wheel again, this time to the left, and shot the Cutlass into the empty space, its two right wheels coming to a stop no more than three inches from the curb.

Haynes dug into a pants pocket for some quarters to feed the meter. “Very smooth,” he said.

“More, slick than smooth.”

They crossed Connecticut on the green light only to find themselves marooned on the center traffic island. “When you were hanging out with the sandwich and soda artists” Haynes said, “did you live around here?”

“My folks’ve always lived within a mile of Dupont Circle, It’s because Pop likes to walk to work although lately he’s been taking a lot of cabs.”

“Nothing wrong with him, is there?”

“Yes,” she said, stepping off the curb as the light changed. “He’s lazy.” She glanced at Haynes. “Known him long?”

“We talked once in nineteen seventy-four. It was my eighteenth birthday and Steady took me to dinner at Mac’s Place. Your father stopped by the table and later sent over two cognacs that made me feel all grown-up.”

“That makes you thirty-three then, doesn’t it?” she said.

“Not until August.”

There were no longer any soda jerks or a fountain for them to work behind in the Schwartz drugstore. The young Nigerian pharmacist in the rear told Haynes the fountain had been gone for at least ten years, maybe even twelve. The drugstore now seemed to concentrate on selling toiletries, discount vitamins, over-the-counter cure-alls, junk food and the occasional prescription.

They were in the drugstore just long enough for Haynes to question the young pharmacist. After they left, Erika McCorkle stood on the corner, looking around and glowering, as if trying to will the neighborhood back into what it had been when she was six or seven.

“I’m not old enough to hate change,” she said more to herself than to Haynes.

“You hate it most when you’re five or six.”

“Nothing changed when I was five or six.”

“Then you obviously had a happy childhood.”

“What I had were two older but remarkably well suited and reasonably well adjusted parents.”

“Then you were also lucky,” Haynes said. “Want some coffee?”

“The Junkanoo,” she said. “The bastards tore down the Junkanoo.”

“A nightclub, wasn’t it?”

“Right over there,” she said, pointing to a missing-tooth gap on the east side of Connecticut Avenue in the 1600 block. “I knew it closed. But now it’s gone. It just — aw, fuck it. Let’s get that coffee.”

They found a small Greek restaurant up the street called the Odeon that seemed willing, if not anxious, to serve them. He drank his coffee with cream and sugar; she drank hers black. As he stirred the coffee, Haynes said, “You see much of Steady?”