John Lescroart - The Hunt Club

Hunt's eyes kept returning to the bar. He saw that Fairchild, Tombo, and Parisi were now working on fresh rounds that came in snifters. Serious drinks. "They're going to be hurting tomorrow," he said.

Wu glanced over. "Andrea's been slamming 'em back all night, Wyatt, as if you didn't notice. She's going to be dying , but look at her now…"

"You don't have to tell Wyatt to look at her," Brandt said. "He's got that part down."

Hunt deadpanned him. "I'm facing them, Jason. Should I avert my eyes? Besides, there are far worse things to look at."

"Whoa, screaming endorsement," Wu said. "I'll tell Andrea you said that."

Hunt sipped his coffee. "I don't see my opinion impacting her worldview."

"Don't kid yourself," Brandt said. "She speaks very highly of you from time to time."

Hunt said, "I'm sure." Then trying to sound casual, "What does she say?"

Brandt blew some smoke. "She likes when you happen to meet up on your morning runs. Says it's often the high point of her day, just the two of you, puffing along the Embarcadero."

Hunt had been doing business with Parisi as the representative of her firm-Piersall-Morton-for nearly a year. He thought she was attractive enough, but the relationship was strictly professional. Then they had inadvertently met up during their respective jogs one morning a couple of months ago. Six A.M. in dense fog, Parisi telling him she didn't realize he was as much an idiot as she was. He'd run with her until she turned off at Bay, neither of them saying much.

Since then, it hadn't been inadvertence. Now most mornings, Hunt left his place at the same time and ran the same route, and without ever discussing it, they'd met up more than a dozen times. He never considered that she might have been timing it herself.

"What does she like about it?" Hunt asked.

"You don't hassle her," Wu said.

"That's true enough. I don't think I've said a hundred words to her."

"That's what she likes," Brandt said. Obviously, he and Wu had talked about this. "You treat her like a normal person."

"She is a normal person," Hunt said, his eyes flicking over to the bar again, "in sweats with her hair up." He lifted his chin, indicating the media trio. "But that person over there, that's not a normal person. That's a star."

"Well," Brandt said, "she's that, too. Although I don't think she's as happy with that or committed to being that person."

"She doing a great imitation, then," Hunt said.

"She's trying to figure it out." Wu exhaled smoke. "I mean, can't you see the attraction? New York. Fame and glamour. On TV every day. Huge bucks. You know what she's been making all this time she's been doing Donolan?"

"I guessed minimal," Hunt said. "I thought mostly it was advertising for her firm."

Brandt shook his head. "Nope."

"She started at five grand a week," Wu said, "and got great ratings. Now it's twenty."

Hunt nearly choked on his drink. "Twenty thousand dollars a week? For three sound bites a day if she's lucky?"

Brandt said, "She goes to New York, it's five hundred K a year-and goes up fast."

"Which," Wu added, "beats seventy hours a week with Piersall."

"It beats anything I've ever heard of," Hunt said. He took in the scene at the bar. "No wonder she's hustling it."

"Well." Wu, almost wistful, turned her head to look. "But as you say, she's a normal person at heart." Over at the bar, as they watched, Parisi clinked glasses with Fairchild, and her wonderful contralto laugh carried across the room. Wu sipped her espresso. "I'm just afraid she's fighting herself."

Hunt leaned in closer to Wu. "What do you mean?"

"She wouldn't have to tank herself up so much if it came easy. I mean the big personality, the star stuff. You don't need to drink that much if you're happy, Wyatt. Believe me, I know whereof I speak."

Hunt had his eyes on Andrea. "Maybe she's just partying."

"Maybe," Wu admitted, "but when I was partying like that not so long ago, I wasn't happy. I was hiding."

"And I found you," Brandt said.

She lifted his hand and kissed it. "And thank God you did."

"You guys should get a room," Hunt said.

Brandt's hand moved over Wu's back. "Maybe we should," he said.

Again Parisi's laugh carried over to them. At the bar, they seemed to have ordered yet another round and clinked their glasses again.

A half hour later,Wu and Brandt were gone. His cigar finished, Hunt got up to leave at the same time they did, but after stopping by the bathroom on his way out, he caught another glimpse of Parisi at the bar. Without conscious thought, he boosted himself up onto an empty stool against the wall in the back corner, where he was all but invisible.

Tombo was gone, too. It was just Fairchild and Parisi, heads close to each other. From the suddenly drawn and empty look on Parisi's face, Hunt found it hard to imagine her laughing about anything. She turned her face away from Fairchild, and the bar's dim amber light reflected off the line of her cheek, and Hunt realized with a start that he was looking at the track of a tear and that she was crying.

Fairchild was leaning over, in toward her, when in a flash, she straightened and turned back to him. Her hand moved in a blur. At the same instant, Hunt heard the bitterly angry "Fuck you!" that brought the bar to a sudden silence along with the report of the slap against Fairchild's cheek. Again, "Just fuck you, Spencer!"

And then she was off her stool and moving unsteadily around the end of the bar to the front door. In the tense silence, Hunt heard a throaty sob escape as she pushed the front door open roughly enough to slam it against the side of the building. Outside, she stood for a half second, looking both ways, and then turned to her right and began to run.

Hunt was on his feet before the door closed, out onto the sidewalk and after her. She had less than a hundred feet on him. The sound she was making echoed between the downtown buildings. She seemed almost to be wailing-a continuous if staccato moaning punctuated by her footfalls. Hunt called her name and broke into a run after her.

Before the next corner, the street fell off more sharply and Parisi's voice rose in a startled yelp as she pitched forward, went down, and rolled to a whimpering stop into the gutter on Montgomery Street. In seconds, Hunt was next to her, trying to turn her over, see if she was all right.

But hearing a man's voice, her eyes clouded with tears and she lashed out at him wildly, screaming, "No! No! No! Leave me alone."

He didn't let her go but held her as she struggled against him. "Andrea, it's okay. It's okay. It's Wyatt."

Parisi, struggling against him, saying, "No, no, no, no."

"It's Wyatt, Andrea. Let's get you up."

"Can't." Closing her eyes, "Going to be sick."

Her body began to spasm. Hunt turned her head and held her as she lost her last couple of drinks and most of her meal.

"Okay," he said, "it's okay. Just let it go. You'll be all right."

When she seemed to have finished, he pulled off his tie and cleaned her face with it, leaving it in the gutter. Getting her to her feet, he backed her away from the curb. Her purse had flown away from her on her fall and was now in the middle of the street. He set her down against the nearest building while he went to get it. When he came back, her eyes were closed, her breathing ragged. Going into a squat, he touched her cheek.

"Andrea, can you hear me?"

She barely moved.

"Do you think we can get you home?"

No response.

He opened her purse, found a wallet, opened it up for her address. She lived someplace on Larkin Street, which ran way the hell up to the north end of the city. Hunt looked at his watch-nearly midnight. For all of its congestion during the workday, this time of night Montgomery was deserted. No cars had passed the whole time he'd been here.