T. Boyle - Talk Talk

Or it wasn't a bar, actually, in the strictest sense of the word-it was a bar/restaurant, looking to go upscale, part of the interconnected complex the city fathers had built along the riverfront to attract tourists and the locals who had a little money in their pockets and thought they were getting something special because the waiters wore starched white aprons over dress shirts and ties and the Hudson was right outside the window. And he wasn't complaining-he loved to drift into places like this, the Varathane still fresh on the pine wainscoting, the owners young and uninitiated and looking to score big. It was like a busman's holiday for him, studying the menu, the wine list, seeing what they were getting for what they were putting out, but it was strictly for comparison. He'd never own a restaurant again. Too much shit. Too much heartache.

It took a minute for his eyes to adjust, and then he nodded at the hostess (eighteen, natural blonde, with a butterfly tattooed on the wing of her left shoulder, and he hated that, hated tattoos on women, especially when they wore them in intimate places-it just suggested traffic to him, that was all), removed his shades, swept a hand over the crown of his head to settle his hair and pulled up a stool at the bar. The place was fairly well crowded and that surprised him. The bar was full of business types in lightweight summer suits, plus a couple of secretaries and three or four of the local lowlifes-you could pick them out at a glance, despite their bright-colored shirts and the watch-me-behave-myself looks on their faces-and maybe two-thirds of the tables were filled, mostly with women, mostly drinking iced tea and picking at the crab salad served on half an avocado. What was the word he was looking for? Déclassé. It wasn't Sausalito, that was for sure.

He'd just ordered his beer and half a dozen cherrystones, just spread out the paper on the bar and glanced up at the TV screen to see somebody somewhere hitting a home run on yesterday's highlight reel, when he felt a hand on his shoulder and swung round on the stool as if he'd been burned, jumpy-crazed, freaked-despite himself. For a moment he didn't know whose eyes he was staring into, some stranger's, some jerk who wanted to just have a glance at the sports page or politely ask if he might not mind shifting down a stool so he could- “Peck, man-don't you recognize me?”

It was Dudley, Dudley with his hair cut short and his earring banished, dressed in a white apron over a long-sleeved shirt and tie. He didn't know what to say. Tried to stare right through him, hello, goodbye, “You talkin' to me?” But it wasn't working, wasn't going to work. He was William Peck Wilson, and though he hadn't been anywhere near Peterskill in three years, he'd already been sniffed out. “Newburgh.” Jesus Christ. It was twenty-five miles away and on the other side of the river. Who would have thought anybody would know him here?

Dudley was standing there grinning as if they'd just gone in together on a winning Lotto ticket. His eyes were like grappling hooks. His lips were drying out. “Yeah,” Peck said, ducking his head, “yeah. Good to see you.”

“Oh, man, I can't believe it. So you're back, huh?” And then, before Peck could answer, he was calling down to the bartender, “Hey, Rick-Rick, give this man anything he wants. What do you want? A little nip of that single-malt scotch-what did you used to drink?”

The name stuck in his throat like a wad of phlegm. “Laphroaig.”

“Yeah, right: Laphroaig.” He stole a glance over his shoulder. “I'm not supposed to drink while I'm working, but hey, this is special, a special occasion.” He shifted on his feet, took a step back to widen his view, then reached out a balled-up fist to rap Peck on the shoulder. “Shit!” he barked. “Shit, Peck, it's great to see you. Balls up, man. Balls up!”

He couldn't help himself-something just snapped at that point-but suddenly he seemed to have Dudley by the arm and he was gripping that arm in his right hand as if he wanted to crush it and he was pulling Dudley to him so that he could drop his voice to that Greenhaven register: “Don't call me that,” he said. “Don't call me by name. Not ever.”

The light banked in Dudley's eyes, then came back in a soft glimmer of recognition. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I can dig it.”

Then they had the Laphroaig. Then they made some very quiet, very general conversation until Dudley had to excuse himself to go back to work. There was that moment of farewell and goodbye and see you next time, but Dudley just wasn't ready to let it go yet. “So,” he said, already leaning toward the kitchen, “am I going to see you around, or what? Are you back?”

Peck watched two women get up from their table by the window and fuss around over their purses and shopping bags and whatever else they'd dragged into lunch with them, their backsides tight in their skirts as they bent down and came up again. Beyond them, out on the river, a lone high gull coasted on the streaming currents of the air. He stood, tucked the paper under his arm. “No,” he said, “just passing through.”

THEY WERE SOMEWHERE in Utah, staring out at the salt flats that were so blanched and bleak and unrelieved he might have created them himself for the backdrop to some post-apocalyptic thriller, but he was too tired, sweat-slicked, dehydrated and vaguely feverish even to guess at the storyline or get beyond the long-distance shimmer of the (hackneyed) opening shot. Dana was driving. She'd been gazing into her laptop all day as if it were the crystal ball in “The Wizard of Oz,” and then they'd stopped to gas up and use the restroom and she'd taken over the wheel. For the last couple hundred miles he'd been steeling himself to call Radko, just to see how things stood, though he knew in his heart that by now somebody else would be occupying his cubicle and plying his mouse. It was hot, the car's air conditioner barely functioning, the sun glancing off the hood, the dashboard, the buttons of the radio. His underarms were clammy and abraded and his T-shirt was stuck to his back and he kept playing with the vents to maximize the minimal airflow, without much success. He took a moment to glance at Dana, her jaw set and hands rigid on the wheel, then pulled out his phone, punched in the number and raised his eyes to the white vacancy of the horizon.

The phone picked up on the second ring. “Rad,” Radko announced, delivering his standard telephonic greeting, as if pronouncing the two syllables of “hello” were a waste of time.

“Rad?” Bridger repeated stupidly. He'd been listening to talk radio out of boredom, some reactionary demagogue of the airwaves spewing about communists and liberals and Mexicans in a high inflammatory voice, and though he'd turned down the volume, the noise was still there. The term “eco-Nazis” rose up out of the chatter and fell away.

“Who is this? Bridger? Bridger, is that you?”

“Yeah, uh-hi.”

“Where are you?”

“That was what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to tell you-”

“You tell me nothing. You are at airport, you are in your house, you are standing in lobby of this building where I am running a business and paying the rent, and it does not matter, does not”-he paused to snatch at the word-“register. And you know why?”

“I'm in Utah.”

“Utah.” There was an infinite sadness in the way he pronounced it, as if Utah were a prison or a leper colony.

“That's what I wanted to tell you, I'm sorry, but Dana, I mean, Milos-”

“No, do not bring my cousin's name into this.”

“We have to go to New York, because this thief-”

“Thiff, thiff, always this “thiff”-give it up why don't you? Already, enough.”