T. Boyle - Talk Talk

Head down, walking crisply, with purpose, he crossed in the middle of the block and came down the street toward the station, past the outdoor cafe with a bunch of people chewing as if their lives depended on it and the area reserved for taxis-and when he saw the cabs idling there and the northbound train sitting at the platform the idea came into his head to slide into one of the cabs and hustle out of there, but he dismissed it. The police would arrive in a matter of minutes, once the clown got himself up off the floor and the wreckage settled and the bartender dialed emergency, and the cab would have to go right by them. He saw all that, moving forward, never breaking stride, though people were looking at him-blood on his face, his pants torn and dirty-and he mounted the platform and stepped onto the train, taking a seat on the far side. A minute later he was in the restroom, dabbing at his face with a wet paper towel, hearing sirens-or was he imagining it? A minute after that the train jerked forward, the wheels taking hold, and then the car was swaying as if under the influence of two competing and antithetical forces and the rattling started and they were under way, heading north.

The cut-it was a scrape, really, with a thin slice down the middle of it-traced his right cheekbone all the way to one very red ear and it was bleeding more than it should have, and that was inconvenient. There was little chance that whatever cop responded to the scene at the tavern would connect him with the incident and even less that they'd bother with the train because it was just a bar fight, after all, one of a million, but still he didn't want to draw attention to himself unnecessarily. If they had the Mercedes they'd be at the house with a warrant and there'd be somebody there for a few days at least waiting for him to turn up, but he wasn't going to turn up, he had no intention of turning up-at the house or anywhere else. He wasn't that stupid, though he was getting there. When he'd stanched the bleeding, he took a fresh wad of paper towels, soaked them through, and waded out into the lurching car, taking an empty seat on the near side now, so as to present his left profile to the conductor when he came round taking tickets.

They were making the big sweep round the base of Anthony's Nose when the conductor came up the aisle behind him. “Beacon,” Peck said, turning to him, the wadded-up towels pressed to his cheek. The conductor-a black man, older, with distant eyes and a fringe of processed hair hanging limp under his cap-didn't ask, but Peck said, “Hell of a toothache,” and he handed him a bill and the man punched his ticket and gave him his change and that was that. For the moment, at least. But what next? And why had he said Beacon and not Buffalo? Or Chicago?

When they stopped at the Garrison station-a little nothing of a stone building, a row of houses, the flat hand of the river and a big empty parking lot-and there was nobody waiting for him, no cops and no Natalia, he began to understand. There was unfinished business here, and the thought of it twisted at him and soured the contents of his stomach, the flat beer out of the twelve-ounce glass, stale bar mix, the Coke that ate right through him like battery acid. Natalia had left him. She was gone. It was over. For all he knew she could be on this very train, connecting to Toronto. But no, that wasn't her style, and he tried to picture her, the little moue of a kissing mouth she would make when she was concentrating on something, doing her eyes or working a crossword puzzle, Natalia, stepping out of the bath or tipping back a glass of Beaujolais Nouveau or worked up and fuming at him, as capable of action as anybody he'd ever met. She would take a cab to Hertz or Enterprise, rent a car, pick up Madison and go back to the house. Where she would brood and fling things on the floor and swig vodka, squat and murderous and stomping around in her bare feet till she passed out and the cops came in the morning with their warrant and turned the house upside down. And then she'd suck down more vodka and take Madison out to lunch and go shopping and eventually she'd find herself back in the house, sorting out the damage. She'd look out the window and see the rental car there, something nice, something sporty-a Mustang, maybe, or a T-Bird, because why would she deny herself as long as the credit cards still worked? — and before long she'd start packing the car with everything she could carry. And then she'd be gone.

As the train rattled through the remnants of the day, the declining sun striping the looping arc of tracks ahead and picking out individual leaves in the treetops while the rest faded to gray, his mind began to close a fist over that picture of Natalia and he found himself getting angry all over again. The house. He hated to lose the house as much as he hated losing her-and the things he'd collected. The car. The names in the notebook, pure gold, every one of them. His business. And Sukie. That was over too. And that was another thing: how quickly it had all turned on him. This morning he was on top of it, waking up in a mansion, six months paid in advance and a lease to buy, climbing into an S500 and taking his fiancée to meet his mother and his daughter he hadn't seen in three years. That was when the image of Dana Halter rose up before him and he saw her there on the sidewalk, the look in her eyes, knowing what he was going to do before he knew it himself, and then the way she'd run, making a chump out of him, a fag, somebody's girlfriend. He wanted to hurt her. Hurt her the way he'd hurt Bridger Martin. Even the score. One parting shot. And out.

It was still light when he got off the train at Beacon, a real shithole of a place, crap blown up along the tracks, crap floating in the river, graffiti all over everything as if nobody cared about anything, not even their own human worth, and where were the cops when you needed them? Why weren't they nailing the little punks with their spray cans instead of busting his ass? For that matter, why weren't they out here cleaning up the trash and painting over the gang signs and obscenities instead of burning up the taxpayers' gasoline to drag their bloated carcasses from one doughnut shop to another? Oh, he was in a mood. He recognized that. What he needed was a car, a change of clothes, something in his stomach. He hadn't eaten all day, not since breakfast-too wired, too scared, too outraged even to think about it-but now, suddenly, he was starving.

The streetlights began to make themselves visible, an amber glow bellying out into the shadows, and already the insects were there, drifting like snow. There were a couple of people milling around, white T-shirts faintly glowing against the fade of the light. He heard a girl laugh aloud and turned to see a knot of teenagers perched on the concrete abutment, passing a bottle in a brown paper bag. He didn't see any cabs and so he started walking up the hill toward the lights of the town-always look as if you have a purpose, that was a rule-and before he'd gone three blocks he saw a yellow cab pulled up in front of a tavern and crossed the street to it and leaned in the driver's side window. A Puerto Rican kid with a heavy scruff of acne was behind the wheel, the radio spitting up a low-volume spew of hip-hop. “You waiting on somebody?” Peck asked.

The kid's eyes, naked and too big for his face, skirted away from him. He mumbled something in reply.

“What?”

“Supposed to be.”

Peck jerked a finger toward the tavern. “Somebody in there?”

The kid nodded, his eyes flashing white in the dark vacancy of the interior.

“Forget about them,” Peck said, fishing a twenty out of his wallet and handing it to him. “Here, this is for you. I need you to take me someplace where I can rent a car at this hour on a Saturday night. What about the airport? You know the airport on the other side of the river? They got to be open twenty-four/seven, right?”