T. Boyle - Talk Talk

“Yeah, you do that,” the guy snarled, trying to tough it out, but this was the same voice that had come at him over the phone and it had nothing behind it, nothing at all, and the door slammed and the night went quiet but for the solitary receding footsteps of Rick Atkinson on the gravel walk.

And then the strangest thing: the two figures stayed there on the doorstep a long moment, conferring, but without saying a word. Their hands-they were working their hands like ghostly shrouded puppets, and it took him a moment to understand. They were deaf. Or she was deaf. She was the one who hadn't spoken and so here she was juggling her hands as if she were molding something out of the air and passing it to him and then he juggled it and passed it back. It was so unexpected, so private and intimate, that Peck lost all consciousness of the moment. He felt like a voyeur-he “was” a voyeur-and his rage at what had just taken place cooked down into a sort of wonder as he watched them walk down the steps and up the path to the parking area. He was going to leave it at that-they were going, that was enough, and by morning he'd be gone too and all this would be behind him-but he recovered his wits in time to slip out of the shadows and follow them. Just to see what they would do next.

Somehow they'd traced him to the condo, but what did that mean? He wasn't Dana Halter anymore, he wasn't Frank Calabrese. “Frank Calabrese”-that gave him a chill. How in Christ's name did they get hold of that? But still, even if they called the cops and the cops came-a remote possibility-nothing would happen, or at least not immediately. Where was the proof? He'd deny everything, act bewildered. And then, if he had to, incensed. The cops could see just by looking at him, by the way he was dressed, by the way he held his ground at the door of his three-quarters-of-a-million-dollar luxury condo, that they were out of their league. These two must have known that. But then what were they doing-playing amateur detective? Looking to run him down, confront him, settle this outside the law? For all he knew they could have a gun. Anybody could have a gun, the rangiest no-chin kid on the street, the old lady pushing a shopping cart, housewives, mothers-guns were the currency of society, and he, personally, wanted nothing to do with them, especially not on the receiving end.

The shadows played to him. He stayed out of sight, following the scrape of their shoes on the gravel path, watching their silhouettes bob against the hard fixed umbrella of light opening out of the pole at the far end of the lot. He saw them juggle their hands again when they reached their car-a black Jetta, California plates-and then they were speaking aloud, but he couldn't make out what they were saying, her voice blurred and thumping at the syllables as if she had a blanket over her head, his voice blending with hers in a way that made them both indistinct. After a while, they climbed into the car and the doors slammed with two soft detonations, one on the tail of the other.

And what was he thinking? He was thinking he could just step out of the bushes and lay the guy out, break him up, and her too, some applied discouragement to end it right here. But no, that wasn't the way. The way was just to cut his losses and move on. He still had Natalia, he still had money-and a new Mercedes S500 in Bordeaux Red. Peterskill wasn't Mill Valley, maybe, but he'd missed the leaves changing in the fall, snow for Christmas, all of that, and it wouldn't be so bad, not once he got settled. Plus there'd be Florida, Florida in the winter, and they had this whole trip ahead of them with nothing to do but see the country and kick back and enjoy themselves.

For a long while he crouched there in the bushes, watching the back end of the car, letting his mind run-Natalia would be in a state, no doubt about it, and there'd be no rest at all, not till he got her in the Mercedes and pulled the door shut behind him. The story, as it was evolving in his head, the one he would refine at length as they rolled cross-country, had to do with his bankruptcy, the failed restaurants, a fictitious name to smooth things out so he could track his investments, and yes, of course they were going to keep the condo for a summer place, no need to pack the dishes, towels, cutlery, and did she really think he was going to leave his wine cellar behind? He put a fist down in the wet to ease the pressure on his knees. There was a smell of rankness, of knife-shaped leaves and eucalyptus buds going over to rot. Across the lawn, up against the buildings, a bank of sprinklers started up with a hiss of released air. And then, finally, the Jetta's brake lights flashed and the engine turned over and he watched the car back out and glide across the lot to pass on into the black grip of the night.

When he got out of prison he didn't spend a whole lot of time dwelling on his hurts and sorrows, on what could have been and what Gina had done to him and all the wasted effort and sweat and blood he'd put into Pizza Napoli and Lugano or the fact that he was bankrupt and an ex-offender who didn't even have his silver Mustang anymore because he'd sold it and everything else he owned to pay his fish-faced lawyer. No, he was too wise for that. His wisdom had been accumulated through the twelve-ton nights in his bunk and the zombie days doing food preparation and staying out of trouble-and he had to work hard at that. Had to work to rein himself in. Dwell deep. Control the rage that beat in him like a hammer every minute of every day. Because there were some very twisted people inside and the sole meaning and extent of their lives was to fuck with you, and to respond in kind was a lock on extending your sentence. He'd heard the stories. And he put his head down and counted the days off the calendar and when push came to shove he let his hands speak for him, hard and fast, so fast nobody saw it coming and if some dickhead had to go to the infirmary with a pair of sausage eyes and a broken nose, it was nothing to him. He wasn't like the rest of them-of all the put-upon victims of circumstance in the place he was the single one who really truly didn't belong because he hadn't done anything anybody else wouldn't have done in his place and there was no way he was going to complicate things by letting people get to him. That was the beginning of wisdom.

And then there was Sandman. The College of Sandman.

Sandman had been around. His most recent infraction had, regrettably, involved a certain degree of forcible persuasion, which was why he'd been locked up here amongst the violent offenders. As Peck had. The rest of the inmates, to a man, were losers, the kind of scumbuckets and degenerates who deserved what was coming to them-after a year inside Peck felt like a Republican: lock them up and throw away the key-but Sandman was different. He was educated. He believed in things-the environment, clean air, clean water. The man could go on for hours about restoration ecology or the reintroduction of the wolf and how capitalism had sucked up all the resources of the world just to spit them back out as hair dryers-he had a real thing for hair dryers-and greenback dollars. Six-three, tattooed over most of his body, with a physique honed in the weight room, Sandman, who wasn't much older than he was, showed him the way. “You know how they say, 'Be all you can be'? In those Army recruiting ads? Well, I say, 'Be anybody you can be.'”

He was talking about the Internet. He was talking about the greed of the credit card companies, online auto loans, instant credit, social security numbers skimmed at the fast-food outlet and the gas station and up for sale on half a dozen sites for twenty-five dollars per. He was talking about Photoshop and color copiers, government seals, icons, base identifiers. The whole smorgasbord. “Be anybody you can be.”