S Rozan - Absent Friends

Markie's mom starts to say something to Jimmy, some big thank-you, and Jimmy feels weird, like he's about to get a Christmas present that belongs to somebody else.

Markie, man, he says, you gotta be nuts, you think that's what happened. Jimmy pops the top on a Coke, slurps the foam that jumps out of the can. What really happened, he says, I just sort of bumped into you. You think I'd risk my ass saving yours, you got another think coming. Jimmy's using a word the kids aren't supposed to use, and the moms and dads frown. Markie's about to say something else, but he stops. He grins, shrugs, throws Jimmy a Twinkie. Jimmy bites it hard so the cream comes squirting out the end. His mom says, Oh, Jimmy! and races a napkin to him. Suddenly everyone's eating and talking and that's the end of that.

Except Jimmy, gulping his Coke, catches Tom looking at him, just for a second. How Jimmy feels from this look of Tom's is different from how he felt when all the moms and dads were staring at him like he was the only one the sun was shining on. How he feels, it makes him think of a Mets game his dad took him to, when he caught a rookie lefthander with a scorching fastball getting a nod from a veteran reliever, a guy you could count on to close out a game but you never saw newspaper stories about. Jimmy'd seen the rookie smile a little, and nod back, and it made him wonder how the rookie felt. Now, Tom looking at him this way, Jimmy thinks maybe he knows.

About Jimmy and Markie: that's how it was then, that's how it's been. Jimmy just supposes some people are like that, born with no sense. No point in getting mad at them, it's like getting mad at people who're born deaf. It's just, if you know someone like that, you have to look out for them.

And what Jimmy's thinking now, the way he sees to do what Mike the Bear wants-the way that's like something Tom would do-maybe this is a way he can do this thing for Mike the Bear, and look out for Markie, too.

October 31, 2001

Phil thumbed off his cell phone, slipped it back in his pocket. Marian Gallagher's voice-a voice he'd never liked, too full of incense and intuition, earth goddesses and community trade-echoed in his mind. He turned to the window, staring not down to the carless streets but up into the empty sky. No, not empty. The military patrols flew so high you couldn't hear them, but if you looked up at the right time, you could catch the silver flashes against the blue.

Working at his desk, his back to the window, Phil had always liked the roar of planes. It had meant someone was going somewhere, someone was getting away. Good for you, Phil thought. That sound was gone now, lost to the no-fly zone the air over Manhattan had become. If the no-fly was ever lifted and air travel was allowed over the island again, the joy in that roar would still be lost to Phil, who'd heard the first plane hit and seen the second.

It wasn't the sound of planes that was on his mind now, though, and not the blue, blank sky. He was thinking about Marian's voice, what she'd told him, how he'd reacted. And, equally, about how impossible he and Marian had always found it to be decent to each other.

That Phil and Marian couldn't resist some sniping had been glaringly apparent two days ago, when, drink unfinished, Marian had stood, scowled, and strode away, leaving Phil alone in the damn foodie bar in SoHo that had been her choice in the first place. They'd done something they'd spent decades avoiding: they'd met alone, Phil and Marian face-to-face. They had to talk, Marian had said when she called.

Harry Randall, then, was still alive, and who knew how many more pieces he was planning, what he might say? Randall's last story had convinced Marian (and how many others? and how many of them did he give a damn about, besides Sally?) that Phil had been cheating Sally from the beginning. The joke was this: everyone else was chasing the money-how deep was Phil Constantine in? what was it he was deep into?-but Marian had higher things on her mind.

“You lied to her,” she sniffed, denouncing him over their drinks (beer for him, and though he generally preferred his beer in a glass, with Marian he made a point of drinking from the bottle; a seabreeze, whatever the hell that was, for her).

He hadn't wanted to meet her, except that he'd had some mad thought that if he could explain to Marian, she could make Sally understand. But as soon as he saw Marian's straight-backed progress through the room (God, did this woman stride everywhere, did she never just walk?), her turquoise and coral earrings (likely picked up at some tony Free Tibet fund-raiser), and her unsmiling face (this he knew was hard for her, her natural inclination being to set others at ease: but not him, never him), he wondered what spell of insanity had made him think she might ever be on his side.

“I lied, Marian,” he agreed, and drank some beer.

“How could you do that? She loves you!”

“Marian, the whole thing is none of your fucking business.” He watched her flush as she took a sip of her pink drink.

“After all she's been through. How could you?”

“Is the point of this meeting to tell me what a shit I am?”

“No!” She sat up even straighter and glared at him. “I'm here so you can tell me the truth.” She made it sound like it was an opportunity for him, an offer he was lucky to get.

“Why?”

She blinked, and he almost laughed.

“Screw you, Marian. I don't owe you anything.”

“You owe Sally.”

“Sally and I-” But there was nothing about himself and Sally that he was interested in telling Marian, so he stopped.

“The truth might help you.” As though pointing out something he hadn't thought of.

“Help me what? Help me how? Fix things between me and Sally? Is that what you want? To help us patch things up?”

That was a lie she couldn't tell, and to her credit she said nothing.

He signaled for another beer, put his near-empty bottle down so that the ring it made added to the chain of rings he was forging left to right across the tabletop. “I got the money from Jimmy McCaffery,” he suddenly heard himself say. And this time he did laugh.

Her face darkened. “You think that's funny?”

Phil shook his head, still grinning, and lifted the beer again, finishing it in one long pull. He resisted the impulse to wipe his mouth on his sleeve. What was funny was this: even he, even now, if for half a second he glanced away, didn't keep an eye on himself, look what happened: he found he'd wandered halfway down the midway and was buying, from some quack whose booth was all tinkly music and colored lights, the patent medicine idea that the truth could set you free.

He grabbed himself by the shoulder and marched himself back through the sawdust and the horseshit. He'd already said it, so he might as well say it again. “From McCaffery,” he repeated. “But I never knew anything else about it.”

“How is that possible?”

“You want to know how it's possible? Or you want me to say it's not and I'm lying?” She didn't answer, so he just went on and told her the way it had been, how it was possible. “He said he felt like it was his fault.”

“His fault? His fault how?” she asked, and Phil had the feeling she was speaking without breathing.

“Keegan was his friend. He should've been able to do something. I told him that was nuts, the guy was inside, but he wouldn't give it up.”

“That's all he meant?”

“That's all he said.”

She did breathe now, her chest rising, falling. “And the lie? Why lie about the money?”