James Grippando - Last to die

“Don’t apologize. If Mr. Swyteck leaves now, you’ll be home in plenty of time. You ready, Jack?”

He’d agreed earlier to drop off the sitter on his way home. “I guess so.”

The girl tiptoed past them and continued down the steps. Jack looked at Kelsey and said, “Can we talk more about this, please?”

“I’ll call you.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

They were standing just a few feet apart, but neither one moved, as if it now seemed awkward that just moments earlier they’d been headed toward a good night kiss. Kelsey gave him a tight smile and said simply, “Good night, Jack.”

She went inside, and Jack waited for her to look back, catch his eye, and telegraph some sign of encouragement. It didn’t come. He turned away as the door closed, then caught up with the baby-sitter in the driveway, who was peering out impishly from beneath her bangs.

“Sorry I spoiled your moment, Mr. Swyteck.”

He scratched his head with the car key as he glanced back at Kesley’s house. “Don’t worry. About the only thing I’m sure of is that it wasn’t you who spoiled it.”

I’m going to Africa with you,” said Theo.

Jack had taken a detour after dropping off the baby-sitter. Theo and his band were playing their Friday night gig at a jazz club on Washington Avenue. Jack caught him on his midnight break seated at the end of a long bar, though he’d almost walked right by him in the dim lighting. It was the perfect ambience for the after-midnight crowd, scores of flickering candles in a variety of shapes and sizes in one elaborate candelabra after another. Theo was picking at a blob of wax that had dripped and hardened onto the bar top.

“You are not coming to Africa,” said Jack.

“Look, you’re a hopelessly white lawyer headed for a country of sixteen million Africans whose average weekly wage wouldn’t pay for the bowl of peanuts I just finished. You should be jumping up and down to have a guy like me at your side.”

“All right. We’ll talk about it.”

“That’s what you said yesterday. It’s done. If you go, I go.” He raised his glass in a toast, and after several long moments of consideration, Jack reciprocated with his beer bottle.

“But I’m not paying for your plane ticket,” said Jack.

“Got that covered for both of us. Friend of a friend flies a company jet for oil executives twice a month. It’s never more than half full. We leave this Tuesday. All you have to do is pay for our tickets to Houston.”

“What kind of plane we talking about?” Jack asked with obvious skepticism.

“Jack, really. Would I treat you like anything less than the rock star you are?”

“That’s what they told Buddy Holly.”

Jack’s cell phone rang, and he recognized the incoming number as Kelsey’s. “Be right back,” he told Theo, and then he hurried across the crowded bar to a relatively quiet spot near the back staircase.

“Hi.” He had the phone on one ear and his finger pressed to the other to drown out the drone of nightclub noises from the next room.

“I’m sorry about the way I overreacted,” she replied.

“It’s okay. I’m glad you called.”

“Nate loves you so much. He’s never had anyone like you in his life. His father and I divorced when he was three.”

“Like I said before. He’s the best.”

“That’s why I’m just not sure about us.”

Jack stopped pacing. “That’s what I told you in my car when you suggested we have dinner.”

“I know, and we should have listened to your instincts, not mine.”

“Why the sudden reversal?”

“When you and I were sitting on the porch swing, and I looked back and saw Nate’s little face in the window, my heart sank. He was so happy to see us together. But then another image flashed in my head, one of me a month or three months from now trying to explain to him why Jack doesn’t come around anymore.”

“But you said it yourself at the beginning. You were tired of living your life preparing for the worst-case scenario.”

“Sometimes I do get tired of it.”

“It’s like my friend Theo always says. There’s two kinds of people in this world, risk takers and-” He stopped himself. Risk takers and shit takers sounded okay when belting back beers with Theo, but it seemed a little crude here. “And not risk takers,” he said, grimacing at the lack of poetry in his improvisation. “Anyway, you know what I’m saying.”

“Yes. But I’m Nate’s mother. I have to be careful about the risks I take.”

“I can’t disagree with that.”

“Then you understand?”

“I do. And I don’t. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wasn’t expecting to have such a great time with you tonight.”

“It’s complicated, I know.”

“Until things went sour on your front porch, I was actually starting to think you had the right idea. I’ve been fixed up with two women since my divorce. Both had middle-schoolers who frankly scared the hell out of me. If I’m going to be dating single moms, why not date the one with the world’s greatest kid?”

“There’s definitely two sides to this, but-”

“But now you think my first instinct was right. Leave it to a couple of advocates,” he said, scoffing. “We’ve persuaded each other to reverse roles.”

“Look, we’re not going to resolve this tonight. Maybe it’s a good thing you’re going to Africa. It gives us time to think.”

“Right. A little time is a good thing.”

“So we’re agreed? We just put things on hold for a while, go back to normal.”

Jack had the frustrating feeling that the right words were floating out there somewhere between them, but damned if he could find them. “Okay. Normal it is.”

“Thank you. Have a safe trip, okay?”

“I will.”

“Good night.”

“Good night.” He flipped the cell phone shut and sat on the step, alone. Already, he didn’t like the feeling of “normal.”

The urinal in the men’s room was busted again, and two guys were busily gratifying each other in the only stall, so Theo took the back exit into the alley behind the club. He found a dark, suitable spot between two parked cars, only to find that someone had found the very same spot minutes before he had.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, stepping out of it.

He continued down the dark alley, though he was suddenly thinking more of his talk with Jack than his bursting bladder. He hadn’t exactly told his friend the whole story about why he was going to Africa. Sure, it would be fun, and even more sure, Jack could use a guy like Theo to keep him out of trouble. But Theo’s real agenda was much more personal. The police were zooming in on his brother as a suspect in Sally Fenning’s murder, and Theo alone knew the depth of his debt to Tatum.

The alley was getting darker with each step he took, and Theo finally stopped and looked around. On either side were the unadorned backs of buildings-bars, drugstores, Laundromats. A half block ahead, the lights from Sixteenth Street were a big glowing dot in the darkness, like the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. The walls were cinder blocks painted beige and white. Every door and window was covered with black security bars. If he narrowed his eyes, Theo could almost see one set of hands after another gripping those iron bars, hands without faces, hands he’d linked to anxious voices from within boxes during his years on death row. Those were memories he would have liked to flush. But with his own brother in trouble, and with the barred doors and windows all around him, his mind drifted back to a night on death row that he’d truly thought would be his last hours on earth.