Lionel Shriver - The New Republic

Still, something in the setup oppressed him. Whoever Saddler was, sight-unseen the guy clearly belonged to the elite Exception to Every Rule Club, whose members cast the sort of shadow in which Edgar had lived all his life: the eponymous Falconer, of course, but Edgar’s super-jock older brother as well; the suffocatingly august Richard Stokes Thole; Angela’s affected ex-lover on whom she was secretly still stuck; all those valedictorians, first-chairs, first-prize winners, and presidents.

Furthermore, Edgar was leery of substituting for a minor-league celeb who could show up unannounced any time to reclaim his home, his car, his beat, his half-smoked Camel, and his cold coffee. The very name “Saddler” sounded burdensome. Edgar imagined himself trudging a bleak landscape mounded with his predecessor’s baggage, like a loose burro too dumb and biddable to buck the chattel off his back.

“I guess I’m game,” said Edgar uncertainly. “How soon should I go?”

“ASAP. And here …” Wallasek scribbled an address, which he apparently knew by heart. “Saddler’s digs.” He held out a sheet of paper, adding obscurely, “You won’t suffer.”

Edgar accepted the paper. “So how do I …?”

“Book a flight, submit a receipt, we’ll reimburse,” Wallasek yadda-yadda-ed. “Oh, and one more thing.” The editor thumbed a furry leather contact book on his desk, then snatched the paper back to scrawl a number. “You might get a key to the house from Nicola.” Returning the page with a teasing shimmy, Wallasek leered. “One of Saddler’s friends . His very best friend , from all reports. I’ve never met her, but it’s funny how often Saddler’s numerous friends turn out to be good-looking women.”

A red flag went up: after spending ten seconds on the logistics of Edgar’s whole new life and forty-five minutes on this feckless cad playing hooky, Wallasek still couldn’t stop talking about Saddler .

Edgar folded the paper, stalling. He was sure there were dozens of questions he should be asking, equally sure that they wouldn’t occur to him until he was on the plane. “So, um. What’s my first assignment?”

“The strange and terrible fate of Barrington Saddler, what else?”

It may have been almost twenty years since they’d nodded stiffly at each other across a throng of parents at Yardley’s graduation, but Edgar didn’t anticipate having any trouble recognizing Toby Falconer when they met for a post-interview drink. Toby was one of those golden boys. His hair was so blond it was almost white, confirming for Edgar, whose own mop was mouse-brown, that the chosen people weren’t self-made but genetically marked. Vertical as a mast, Toby’s Nordic frame and sea-green eyes called out for bearskins and a javelin. It was unlikely he’d kept that smooth, narrow chest into manhood, but Falconer was vain enough by sixteen that he’d probably become one of those Nautilus obsessives who poured rice milk on his muesli. Besides, Edgar’s paltry efforts to update his mental mock-up of Toby Falconer—to bulge the muscular wavelets of his stomach into a paunchy swell, to dull the sublime adolescent promise of that platinum blond down to pewter—felt juvenile, like drawing zits on a GQ model with a ballpoint.

He was a little surprised that Falconer’s choice of venue didn’t show more panache. The Red Shoe had once been a chic Flatiron watering hole, but that was years back. Since, the crimson velvet cushions had faded to sickly pink, their plush nap flattened like a cat’s fur in the sink. The varnish on the dark banquettes had worn to expose stained pine. Its waiters were old enough to no longer describe their shifts as “day jobs.” Even Wall Street knew The Red Shoe was déclassé. Maybe it was sufficiently out of fashion to qualify for a tongue-in-cheek reprise, and Toby, as usual, was setting the pace.

Edgar paused in The Red Shoe’s foyer, preparing himself for his old friend—or whatever it was that Toby had become by senior year. After mussing his hair, releasing his top shirt button, and yanking the Windsor knot to the side the way he once wrenched his school tie, Edgar ditched his suit jacket on the coat rack. Edgar’s image at Yardley had been hostile, unkempt, and seditious; an intact chalk-stripe might give Falconer a shock.

Edgar turned and heard a plop. The hanger arm had flipped upside-down and dumped his jacket on the floor. Stripped screw. Flustered, Edgar scooped up the jacket, hastily brushing the lapels. Damn. Especially in these in-between moments—tossing a coat on a rack, swinging from a bucket seat—Toby Falconer had been infuriatingly graceful.

Inhaling, Edgar launched through the double doors, his coat hooked over a shoulder. He was flattering himself to picture his old buddy, waiting expectantly in a corner by himself. Falconer was always mobbed. Forget homing in on the beacon of hair. Just locate the social goat-fuck in the very center of this dive, its biggest table, the one crammed with extra chairs—one more of which Edgar would be obliged to fetch and wedge in somewhere. Falconer would be braying, those mighty fluoride-fortified teeth arrayed to the smoky tin ceiling, arms spread and palms lifted like Jesus, the rest of the rabble wheezing, flopping, wiping tears.

But the bar was quiet. Edgar scanned the large round middle tables: one subdued party, workmates, glancing at watches, looking for an excuse to scram. A couple of loners sagging in booths—one wrung-out dishrag, quietly sobbing (that made three weeping women that he’d happened across today; the daily New York average was five or six), and some balding nondescript.

But then, why would Toby Falconer be prompt? Edgar would stew here for an hour, knocking back beers and refurbishing a resentment that two decades had failed to anodize into indifference. Finally, when Edgar was requesting his check, Toby would sashay in, double doors swinging with his dozen disciples, all drunk, loud, and dashingly dressed, infusing this old-man’s-bathrobe of a bar with its original camp, smoking-jacket flash. For now refusing to consider the higher likelihood that Falconer had blown off their appointment altogether, Edgar assumed a chair at the center-most table and signaled for a waiter.

“Edgar?”

Edgar twisted at the finger on his arm, and experienced one of those blank moments induced by headlines about Barba or Montenegro. It was the balding nondescript. His eyes were mild and dilute, their lids puffy; his face was broad and bland, his figure padded. The man’s skin was pallid, in contrast to the lustrous walnut glow of a thrill-seeker who hot-dogged the winter slopes and sailed at the head of his regatta. But between the gray straggles across his scalp gleamed a few nostalgic streaks of platinum.

“Falconer!” Edgar pumped the stranger’s hand.

“I don’t know what football team you’re expecting. Let’s sit over here. Listen, I’m sorry about The Red Shoe. Last time I was here it was hopping, but I don’t get out much. Christ, you look the same! A little more pissed off, maybe … If that’s possible. But you sure kept that weight off.”

“You, too, you look—terrific!”

Falconer guffawed, a more muffled version of the old clarion bray, recognizable but rounder, less piercing. “Never thought I’d see the day Edgar Kellogg was polite. I look like dog shit! Dog shit with three hyperactive kids and a depressive wife. What’ll you have?”

Edgar liked to think of himself as a Wild Turkey man. “Amstel Light.”

“Never lose the fear , do you?” Falconer smiled, his teeth no longer blinding, though that was unfair; everybody’s teeth yellowed a bit with age. But the smile also seemed physically smaller, and that was impossible.