Russell Banks - Continental Drift

He doesn’t know what’s happening, he tells Avery. He’s a changed man somehow. Maybe it doesn’t show, but inside, he’s a changed man, Bob insists, and it all started last winter, just before Christmas, when out of the blue he got himself turned around one night and ended up taking a hard, honest look at himself and his life, and what he saw made him so angry that he ended up punching the shit out of his car, which was lucky, he realizes now, because it could just as easily have been a perfect stranger he was punching, or Elaine, say.

“You took a hard look at yourself and your life and didn’t like what you saw? So you decided to come down here and work for Eddie? Ol’ Fast Eddie,” Avery says, smiling and shaking his head slowly from side to side.

“Well, you know Eddie,” Bob says, and he explains how he was led to expect that his brother would be making him a partner in his business here, liquor stores and real estate development. “And some other stuff he’s got his fingers in. Shopping centers. I don’t know.”

“Eddie’s a dealer, all right. A real horse trader. This place is made for him. Or he’s made for it.”

No, Bob says. Not true. And he tells about Eddie’s fears of being killed, his involvement, Bob is sure, with the Mafia, “or somebody a whole hell of a lot like the Mafia, somebody he owes a lot of money to. And if he can’t pay it back on time, he says he’ll end up in the back of his car in Tampa Bay.”

Avery is impressed. And his quick advice to Bob is to stay clear of his brother altogether. He tells him that he quit his job just in time, because if Eddie goes, so long as Bob is working for him Bob will go too, especially if he’s running around with a gun on him. “You don’t have a chance to explain much to these guys, Bob. They are definitely not your Catamount Savings and Loan types. What they are is very serious businessmen who enforce verbal promises by having big, ugly guys from Providence and New Jersey fly down just to break your arms and legs very slowly. I shit you not. I’ve been down here three years now, and I’ve seen a lot and heard a lot more, especially being down on the Keys, and there’s two things you end up getting killed for down here, real estate and drugs, and that’s because those are the two things you can make a killing at here. You can be a millionaire overnight, but you can get dead overnight too.”

Bob points to the turnoff for the hospital, and Avery wheels the large, glistening vehicle smoothly off the ramp, turns left at the stop sign, then pulls into the hospital parking lot and stops.

“What about you?” Bob asks.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, how are you making it down here? You’re obviously doing okay,” he adds, gesturing to the car that surrounds them.

Avery slings one arm over the back of his chair and faces his friend. “Hey, Bob. I haven’t changed, not inside, not out. You may have changed, but I haven’t.”

Bob studies him for a few seconds. True, he hasn’t changed, Bob decides. Physically he’s the same, a little heavier, maybe, but only through the face and neck, and that’s natural enough when a man hits his thirties, especially if he’s a drinker. No, he’s the same man he was three years ago — as tall as Bob, but because of his smaller head and face, narrow shoulders and hips, seeming even taller; his hair is still reddish blond, though perhaps a shade or two lighter from the year-round sunshine and a few inches longer in back and over the ears, but that’s the style now, especially here in Florida, and in fact Bob has been thinking of letting his hair grow out some too; Ave’s blue eyes are still narrow, nearsighted, squinty, with a fan of crinkles in each corner, and his teeth still buck out slightly in front, making his face look perpetually adolescent, almost mischievous; his freckled pale skin looks as freshly sunburnt now in October as it did summers when he was a kid, peeling and pink across his nose and forehead no matter how much time he spent in the sun and no matter what precautions he took, hats, lotions, sun shields. No, it’s the same Avery Boone he’s always known, at least outside it’s the same man, and that’s usually an indication that inside he’s the same as well, that he’s just as good-natured and easygoing as he always was, just as lazy, just as easily amused and easily bored as when he was a kid, just as loyal and affectionate, but just as detached and impenetrable too, just as honest as he was, yet just as dishonest, just as careless with his life, as if it meant nothing to him, and just as careful not to risk it for anything less than a sure thing.

“I don’t guess you have changed,” Bob says somberly. “You get by okay with just the boat, taking out groups and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s a good life?”

“A good life.”

“The old Belinda Blue , eh? She worked out fine down here? That old Maine trawler?”

“Yeah. She’s a beautiful boat. Solid. Slow, but solid.”

“You still running that old Chrysler diesel?”

“Yep.”

“Living aboard, like you planned?”

“Not so much now as before. I got an apartment with Honduras. It’s easier that way, with two of us. It gets a little crowded aboard, and whenever I hadda take her out, I hadda move Honduras out first, or else she’d hafta come along as mate, and that’s not really her idea of a good time, going fishing with a bunch of fat, half-drunk, middle-aged salesmen from Cleveland.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“You like that boat, don’t you, Bob.”

“ Belinda Blue ? Jesus, yeah. Man, I still lie back some nights and rerun whole days I spent on that boat, out beyond the Isles of Shoals, down around Newburyport and Plum Island, that time I took her all the way through the canal to the south side of the Cape and cruised back around Hyannis and Truro and Provincetown home across the bay to Portsmouth … I guess that’s about as happy as I’ve ever been, days and nights I spent on that boat. It’s hard to say why, but that boat gave me a feeling that I owned myself. You know? I’d get a few miles out, and all of a sudden, my whole world was that boat. And I had it under control. I could take care of it, and it could take care of me. It’s hard to explain. You probably understand.”

“Yeah, sure I do,” Avery says. “It’s that, having complete control of your whole world. Trouble is, my whole world has expanded a little since then. I mean, I’ve got me a condo now, and this van, and I’m thinking of buying another boat, one real different from Belinda Blue, though, a sport fisherman that can go out after big game and get back before dark. Ol’ Blue’s good for taking parties out in the bay and out along the Pine Islands and so on, you know, for small stuff and maybe for some bonefishing, but it can’t handle the really heavy stuff, marlin, swordfish, the tournament fishing, where for a guy like me the big money is.”

Bob glances at his watch and curses, opens the van door and jumps down to the pavement. “We’re late,” he says. “Visiting hours was over half an hour ago! Elaine’s gonna be pissed!”

Avery follows him across the parking lot, assuring him as they trot along that she’ll understand, Elaine always understands how when the two of them get together they forget all about time, and she’ll especially understand now, since they haven’t seen each other in over three years and all. “We’ll just talk the nurse into letting us by,” he says, but Bob does not hear him. He’s suddenly flooded with his knowledge of Avery’s having made love to Elaine, and coupled to that knowledge, piercing it, is his realization that Avery doesn’t know about Elaine’s confession, which means that they can never talk about it, he and Avery, and so can never get it behind them. The way it is now, Avery himself would have to confess having fucked Bob’s wife, and then Bob would have to pretend to be surprised, enraged, hurt, all over again.