S Rozan - Absent Friends

Laura sat in the armchair and cried. A few times in the last year, she had cried with Harry there, for reasons she couldn't remember now. Except September 11, the obvious reason, which took no remembering, permitted no forgetting. She did remember Harry's silence, and the stroke of his hand on her hair. The indifferent empty blankness of the room now was so utterly unlike Harry's enveloping, companionable quiet that she could not use the same name for it.

Shakily she rose. She went into the white-tiled kitchen with the ancient fixtures Harry had refused to replace. Water hissed into the sink from bronze piping with ornate handles. She splashed it on her face, ran it up her arms, rubbed it on the back of her neck. She stared at it running away, racing to disappear.

Why had she come here, where everything was so hard?

She wasn't sure of the answer, but Reporter-Laura was.

Work.

Work was what she'd come for. Harry's desk, his computer, his file drawers-she had a lot to do. She turned off the tap. The silence that flooded the room was so thick and swampy, she had to force her way through it.

As she turned to walk back into the living room, though, she stopped, she and her heart, for a moment. On the kitchen table stood a pitcher holding roses Harry had brought her early in the week. Their buds had been tightly furled when he'd pulled them with a flourish-ta da!-from behind his back; now they'd shattered, dropping crimson petals on the tabletop, on the floor. Laura gathered the fallen petals and the sad stems, and threw them out.

She had not told Leo about the roses. She had not known how. The truth was so simple, she was afraid it would sound simpleminded, would confirm Leo's suspicion that Laura Stone was on a baseless, emotional crusade: not a reporter chasing a headline but a forlorn lover chasing a vanishing ghost.

But Harry had brought her roses.

With a clear, fathomless certainty, Laura was sure of this: Harry would not have left her without saying goodbye.

September 11, 1978: The Boys (Jack)

And the one who once, on that long-ago night, was about to leave? That was Jack. But Jack is here.

Half-brother to Tom, he works for the clean uncle, too, in the clean side of the business, and he has his own operation, an adjunct, sort of, to his father's business. Not what he wants: Atlanta is what Jack wants, the operation down there young and new, plenty of opportunity, nothing set yet, nothing required. This is Jack, always hungry, knows the answer before the question's finished.

Jack does leave, for a time, not Atlanta but New Haven. He knows his father, Mike the Bear (Jack has always called him “Dad,” his own father a loutish bully he does not remember, a man long gone), picked New Haven because it's closer to home, because they can keep an eye on him there. Other things, Jack's told, will come next, will come later. But New Haven doesn't last. There's a guy there, and a girl; there's trouble, though if you ask Jack he didn't mean anything by it, he was just spreading his wings, what's wrong with that? Everybody so serious all the time! Big Mike brings Jack back, smooths the trouble out (and it costs him: he has to up the take of the locals who move his goods, and he has to pretend to like it), this is how it's always been with Jack.

Jack's been here since. They tell him he's not ready; they tell him Atlanta will happen, but later. Jack hopes so, Jesus God he hopes so. He can't keep doing this, suffocating here in this tiny office-office!-next to Tom's, making calls to small-time bozos, fools who cut their prices because Jack raises his voice, or lowers it, Jack not even working up a sweat.

Jack wishes the war in 'Nam weren't over. When they were kids, there was the war. Some of the older boys in Pleasant Hills, kids' older brothers, went to fight. Jack and Tom, Jimmy and Markie, they played soldier games and couldn't wait for their turn. (Almost always it was Jimmy and Tom on one side, him and Markie on the other, and Jimmy and Tom mostly won because they were smart and patient; but it was Jack and Markie who came screaming out of trees, leaped up in muddy ambushes from drainage ditches, shot pow-pow-pow from the garage roof where no one else ever thought to climb.)

That would be cool, Jack thinks, going to war, that would have been so cool. Crashing through the heat, through the jungle, sneaking up on the enemy while rocket fire lights up the night sky. Leading a platoon, that would have been Jack, oh yeah. Talk about excitement, man, talk about seeing the world!

But they ended that war before the kids got their chance. The girls say that was good, they didn't want the boys to have to go. They say war is a bad thing. But girls don't know.

So Jack's here, Jack's waiting.

And this makes Jack laugh: some of the people who see how restless he is-hell, it's no secret-they think it's Tom. They think what Jack wants is to be the goddamn prince, be the one who's going to take over someday, be what Tom is. Shit. Shit, no! Best thing Tom ever did for Jack was to get born. Sitting with Big Mike for hours, Mike telling Tom: Do it this way, no, son, don't do that, call this guy, watch out for that one. If Jack had to do that, the way Tom does, the way Tom always did, Jesus, it would kill him.

No, not that bullshit.

But his own crew, Jack's okay with that. He's got some guys with balls there, guys who don't cross themselves when someone says Big Mike's name. He's got guys willing to take chances. No gain, Jack tells his guys, without risk. And no fun, either. The net don't appear, Jack tells them, unless you jump.

Eight years old: a summer morning, the kids hanging around on the rocks under the brand-new bridge, the boys and Sally fishing, Marian and Vicky sitting in the sun. The sun's hot, and the waves are crashing like this was the ocean, not just the Narrows, the water making the rocks all black and slippery. The kids can't see the far end of the bridge; it disappears into a thin, sparkly mist, and the spray from the waves makes rainbows all around them.

Vicky's counting how many fish everyone catches. You can't eat the fish from here, they'll poison you, you have to throw them back, so the only way to know who got the most is for someone to count. Mostly, the kids don't care, but Vicky likes counting. Tom usually gets the most, and Vicky always says she knew he would.

The fishing's pretty good where they are, but Jack keeps moving down the rocks, closer to the water. Tom's watching him but keeping his mouth shut. Hey, Jack calls all of a sudden, hey, cool! He puts down his pole and starts to lower himself into a place between the rocks.

What is it? shouts Markie, and he drops his pole, too, and scrambles, slippy-sliding on the slick rocks, toward Jack. Everyone else squints in their direction. Jimmy looks at Tom. Tom's mouth is a thin line, and he starts clambering over there. So does Jimmy, and then everyone else. Jack disappears down between the rocks. Marian shouts, Jack, be careful!

Markie, always fastest, gets there first. Just as he does, a big wave comes, fills up the place between the rocks with a crash of white foam. The foam backs off, and they hear Jack say, Whoa!

You okay? Markie shouts.

Jack coughs. Yeah, but shit, this shit is slippery! Markie, man, I gotta get out, help me get out of here.

The kids are all there now, looking down where Jack is, between the rocks. He's trying to climb out, but his hands and feet keep sliding on the slimy moss. Jack's face is white, he looks back over his shoulder like another wave's chasing him.