T. Boyle - Talk Talk

Frank Calabrese turned out to be a disappointment. He wasn't who he was supposed to be, not even close. The door to the kitchen swung open and she caught her breath, expecting the Frank Calabrese she knew to emerge wiping his hands on an apron, hiding out here in his father's or uncle's or cousin's third-string Mafia restaurant till the heat was off him and he could ruin somebody else's life, a mama's boy, a failure, wasted and weak, and this time she would be the one to stare him down, but the face she saw in the doorway was the face of a stranger. This man was short, broad-shouldered and big around the middle, and he was too old-forty, forty at least. He looked to the waitress, then to the bartender, and followed the line of sight from the bartender's pointed finger to herself and Bridger.

He was deceptively light on his feet for such a big man, this Frank Calabrese, and he glided down the length of the room as if he were wearing ballet slippers, his features composed, his eyes searching hers. “Hi,” she said, and held out her hand. “I'm Dana, and this”-indicating Bridger-“is my fiancé, Bridger. You're Frank Calabrese, right?”

“That's right,” he said, and he'd caught something in her speech that made him narrow his eyes and cock his head ever so slightly as if to get a clearer picture. “What can I do for you?”

Bridger started in then-Bridger, her spokesperson. He dropped her hand and unconsciously ran his fingers through his hair, trying to smooth it back in place. “We're looking for this guy-”

She cut him off: “Criminal. He's a criminal.”

“-this guy who I guess must have used your name as an alias, because-”

She couldn't make out the rest, but she knew the story anyway, not just the gist of it, but the whole of it in all its sorry detail, and she watched Frank Calabrese's face till the rudiments of awareness began to awaken there-Yes, somebody had used his credit cards without his knowledge, and yes, it had been a bitch to straighten it all out; he was still getting bills in the mail and this was three years ago already-and then she unzipped her black shoulder bag and extracted the file folder. Frank Calabrese stopped saying whatever he was saying. Bridger gestured to the bar, meaning for her to lay the folder there and display the evidence. Everyone was watching now, the customers, the bartender, the waitress. She took her time, almost giddy with the intensity of the moment, and then she leaned forward to spread open the folder on the counter, making sure that the police report, with its leering photograph and parade of aliases, was right there on top.

The moment was electric. Frank Calabrese laid a hand on the rail of the bar to steady himself and she could see the current flowing right through him, his face hardening, eyes leaping at the page, and before she formulated the question she knew the answer: “Do you know this man?”

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Son of a fucking bitch.” He looked up at her, and it was as if he didn't see her at all. “You bet your ass I know him,” and his fist came down on the bartop with a force she could feel through the soles of her shoes. She didn't catch what he said next, the key they'd been looking for all along, the base identifier, the name Bridger repeated twice and then reproduced for her with his rapidly stitching fingers so that it hung like a banner on the air: “Peck Wilson. William Peck Wilson.”

He knew he should never have come back, knew it was a disaster in the making, knew that the forces ranged against him-Gina, her fuck-head father, Stuart Yan, the cops, the lawyers-were still in place, merciless and unyielding, and that they'd strip him down to nothing if they had the chance, but it was his choice, wrong or not, and he would have to live with it. Could Dudley be trusted? No, he couldn't, though he'd try his best to be cool about it and that would last all of maybe forty-eight hours or until he ran into somebody from the old days and had his first drink and smoked his first number and started laying out his disconnected version of life under the sun. “Hey, man, this is for your ears only, and don't tell anybody because it's supposed to be like a secret or whatever, but guess who I ran into the other day?”

But he had come back. And he liked the feeling and he liked the house and all that went with it, the shopping and settling in, the smell of the grass as he traced one row after the other on the riding mower that came with the place, the contented squeak and release of Madison's swings pulling hard against their chains, the propulsive thrust of Natalia's figure as she lined the couch up under the picture window or slid the astrakhan rug into place in front of it. And there was Sandman too. Geoff. Geoffrey R. He'd missed him, missed having a buddy, a confidant, somebody he could hang loose with without having to worry about slipping up, because there were times when he looked in the mirror or slapped a credit card down on a waitress' tray and didn't know who he was. William, Will, Billy, Peck, Frank, Dana, Bridger-and the new one, a winner worth something like fifty million Sandman had sniffed out, M. M. Mako, as in Michael Melvin. The name was so ridiculous it had to be real.

All right. Fine. He'd made his choice and he wasn't concerned, not particularly. Even if he got pulled over, the cops had no way of knowing who he was. All they knew was what the license told them: he was Bridger Martin, with a pristine driving record and no outstanding warrants, solid, fiscally responsible, and he was just passing through on his way to Nantucket, a little vacation, and thank you, Officer, yes, I'll be sure to watch my speed. Still, as he carried his mug of coffee and the newspaper down to the office he'd set up in the basement, he couldn't help feeling the smallest tug of uneasiness when he thought of Dudley and Dudley's big mouth and whose ears might be cocked in anticipation. What he wanted-and it came home to him more than ever as he settled in behind his desk, folded back the financial section and looked out on the woods and the river and the pair of squirrels chasing each other across the lawn in quick darting loops-was to live quietly, anonymously, to live in this house with this car and this woman and not have to put up with any shit from anybody ever again. Go north. Go south. Stay invisible. Establish a base in the city, maybe get a little apartment in the Village or TriBeCa, an efficiency, anything, just to have a place to spend the night, because if they were going to go out, if they were going to party, have a nice meal, that was the place to do it. Not that Westchester didn't have plenty of fine dining-and Putnam and Dutchess too-but the real life was down the line, in New York, and nobody would recognize him there. Running into Dudley was a fluke, that was all, and it could happen again or maybe never, not for years. He lifted the paper to the light, took a sip of coffee. Yeah, and what if it was Gina? What if it was Gina he ran into?

It was then-just then, just as he was holding that thought-that there was a rap at the door behind him, the door that gave out onto the lawn. This was a French door, eight panes and a grid of painted mullions. A flimsy thing, old and unsteady on its hinges, a door anybody could see through, anybody could enter. He started-he couldn't help himself-and when he swung round in the chair, a little lariat of coffee sloshed out of the mug to spatter the front of his shirt.

“Hey, man, I didn't mean to startle you”-it was Sandman, the door cracked open, his hand on the knob, his face hanging there in the void, and he was grinning, his eyes winnowed down to two sardonic points of light-“and I wouldn't want to be the one to criticize, but maybe you've had enough caffeine for one morning. I mean, you practically launched out of that chair.”