Dennis Lehane - Since We Fell

“Andrew.” He grasped the man behind his elbow with one hand while shaking his hand with the other. “What brings you to Boston?”

“A show at the Lyric.” Andrew raised his eyebrows.

“That’s great.”

“It is?”

“Isn’t it?”

Andrew shrugged. “It’s a job.”

Caleb walked a pair of drinks over. “Andrew Gattis, back in da house. Stoli still your poison?”

Andrew drained the drink in one swallow and handed the glass back to Caleb. He took the second drink from him, nodded his thanks, and took a moderate sip. “Good to see you.”

“You too.”

Andrew chuckled. “It is?”

Caleb laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “That seems to be your line tonight.”

“Andrew, my wife, Rachel.”

Rachel shook Andrew Gattis’s hand. It was surprisingly smooth, even delicate.

“A pleasure, Rachel.” He gave her a knowing, reckless smile. “You’re smart.”

She laughed. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re smart.” He was still shaking her hand. “I can see that. Shit, anyone can. The beauty, I get. Brian always liked beauty, but the—”

“Play nice,” Brian said.

“—brains, that’s a new one.”

“Hey, Andrew.” Brian’s voice was very light.

“Hey, Brian.” He let go of her hand but kept his eyes on hers.

“Still smoke?”

“I vape.”

“Me too.”

“No shit?”

“Care to join me for one on the sidewalk?”

Andrew Gattis cocked his head at Rachel. “Think I should?”

“What?”

“Join your husband for a vape?”

“Why not?” she said. “For old times. You can catch up.”

“Mmm.” He looked around the room, then back at her. “What were you dancing to?”

“‘Since I Fell for You.’”

“Who would dance to that?” Andrew gave them both a big, baffled smile. “It’s a hopeless song. It’s all about emotional imprisonment.”

Rachel nodded. “We’re trying to be post-ironic, I think. Or meta-romantic. I can never decide which. Enjoy your vape, Andrew.”

He tipped an imaginary hat to her and turned toward Brian and Caleb.

The three of them headed for the door, but Andrew Gattis suddenly turned back. He said to Rachel, “Google it.”

“What?”

Brian and Caleb, almost at the door, noticed he wasn’t with them.

“‘Since I Fell for You.’ Google it.”

“There’s about two hundred covers of it, I know.”

“I’m not talking about the song.”

Brian headed back toward them and Andrew sensed it. He pivoted and met Brian halfway across the floor and they went outside to smoke.

She watched them on the street, all three of them exhaling their vapor. They laughed a lot, like the dearest of old friends, and there was a lot of bro-fection — fist bumping, shoulder slapping, pushing. At one point Brian grabbed Andrew by the back of the neck and pulled him in so their foreheads were touching. They were both smiling, laughing actually, Brian’s lips going a mile a minute and the two of them nodding with their heads adhered like Siamese twins.

When they broke the clinch, the smiles died for a moment, and then Brian looked in the window and caught Rachel’s eyes and gave her a thumbs-up, as if to say, It’s all okay, it’s all okay .

This is a man, she reminded herself, who would literally give you the coat off his back.

When they returned, Andrew seemed interested in everyone in the room but Rachel. He flirted with one of Delacroix Lumber’s employees for a while, chatted up Melissa, spent a fair amount of time talking to Caleb, both of them wearing very somber expressions, and he got drunk with exceptional speed. Within an hour of arriving, he took one step sideways for every five steps forward.

“He never could handle his liquor,” Brian said after Andrew knocked one of the intern’s bags off the back of a chair and then toppled the chair trying to remedy the situation.

When the chair fell everyone laughed, though few seemed to find it funny.

“A buzzkill, this guy,” Brian said. “Always has been.”

“How do you know him?” Rachel asked.

Brian didn’t hear her. “Let me deal with this.”

He walked on over and helped Andrew right the chair. He put a hand on his arm and Andrew yanked the arm back, knocking a half-full glass of beer off the bar in the process. “You fucking roofie me, Bri?”

“All right,” Caleb said. “All right.”

The bartender, Gail’s CrossFit-addict nephew, Jarod, came down the bar, his face tight. “We okay down here?”

“Andrew?” Brian said. “The gentleman’s asking us if we’re okay. Are we okay?”

“Tip fucking top.” Andrew saluted the bartender.

Which pissed Jarod off. “Because I can arrange a ride home for you, sir. You follow what I’m saying?”

Andrew slipped into a rich British accent. “I do, my good publican. And I’d much prefer not to cross paths with the local constabulary tonight.”

Jarod told Brian, “Get your friend in a cab.”

“You got it.”

Jarod picked up the glass that had fallen behind the bar. Remarkably, it hadn’t shattered. “He’s still here.”

“I’m on it,” Brian said.

By this point Andrew had the scowling, inward look of the petulant drunk. In her youth, Rachel had seen her mother and two of her mother’s boyfriends sport similar looks as a regretful day crossed the plane into a regrettable night.

Andrew grabbed his sport coat off the back of a chair, almost toppling it as well. “You still keep the place in Baker Lake?”

Rachel had no idea who he was talking to. His eyes were on the floor.

“Let’s go,” Brian said.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

Brian held his hands high, like a stagecoach driver in the Old West during a stickup.

“That’s some pure fucking wilderness there,” Andrew said. “But then you always liked the wild, Bri.”

He stumbled toward the door, Brian walking behind him, arms still half raised.

On the sidewalk two things happened almost simultaneously: The cab arrived and Andrew took a swing at Brian.

Brian easily ducked the punch and then caught a reeling Andrew in his arms like he was catching a woman in an old movie on her way to the fainting couch. He stood him up straight and slapped him in the face.

Everyone saw it. They’d been watching the drama unfold since the two of them had exited the bar. A few of the young interns gasped. A few others laughed. One young guy said, “Shit. Don’t fuck with the boss man, huh?”

There was something about both the speed and the casual ease of the slap that made it seem twice as brutal. It wasn’t the way someone slapped a man who was a threat, but the way someone slapped a child who was an annoyance. There was contempt in it. Andrew’s shoulders heaved and his head bobbed and it became clear he was weeping.

Rachel watched her husband saying something to the cabdriver, who was out of his cab and trying to wave off the fare, keep a potentially violent drunk out of his taxi.

But Brian handed him some bills and the cabbie took them. Then they both poured Andrew into the back of the cab, and the cab headed up Tremont.

When Brian came back in the bar, he seemed surprised that anyone had been paying attention. He took Rachel’s hand and kissed her and said, “Sorry about that.”

Half of her was still back at the slap, the effortless cruelty of it. “Who is he?”

They went to the bar and Brian ordered a scotch, slipped Jarod fifty bucks for his trouble, and turned to her. “He’s an old friend. An embarrassing, pain-in-the-ass, never-adapted-to-growing-up old friend. You got any of those?”

“Well, sure.” She took a sip of his scotch. “Well, I used to.”