Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

Or waiting out in front of the apartment, out in the cold air for his mother, after snow had fallen, wanting not to be late again to Mass because then everyone would turn to look at them; making a snowball with his bare hands as he waited for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs; watching her walk to the car in her black wool coat and blue dress, her once-a-week face made up with blush and lipstick; his hand burning on the frozen pack in his fist, seeing her breath and his, wishing his snowball were hard enough to smash the windshield but knowing it wasn’t; and then entering the car, going back into that silence that wasn’t even punishment or rebuke but simply her way of getting by, the air from the whining defroster cold on his face at first, its stale plastic scent soon erased by the sharper smell of his mother’s cigarette.

Like taunts, these memories were, the past trying to claim him back at his weakest moments.

If he could just sleep, he kept thinking, then his concentration would return. He could switch off the news and his brain would stop shaking loose these useless recollections and he could focus again on the problem at hand.

He headed down into the lobby and out to the car waiting to take him to the Ritz. On the way there, he dialed Mikey.

“I don’t know how you got those papers,” Mikey said, “but they did the job. You won. That Graves Society’s a joke. She stopped making donations three years ago. And their taxes — anyway, the court tossed Cushman’s order out. Charlotte Graves isn’t getting title to anything.”

“Does she have an appeal?”

“To God, maybe.”

“Good. I want you to call the broker and get the house listed.”

“Didn’t you hear what I said? You beat her.”

“Yeah, I heard you. But I need it listed. I want the asset in cash.”

“I just won your fucking appeal for you! I spent a year building you a house for Christ’s sake. You picked the investment, we cleared the land, you got your mansion. Now just live in it for a few years, would you? Turn a real profit.”

“I appreciate all you did. I’ll have Sabrina handle the broker if you want.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“I’m your friend, Mikey. But the situation, it’s changed.”

FROM THE HOTEL WINDOW, Nate could see a young couple down at the Arlington Street gates in shorts and sun hats. They paused to consult a map as their children ran ahead to gawk at the statue of General Washington mounted on his horse, his bronze eyes casting a permanent gaze up Commonwealth Avenue. Beyond the gates, in the Boston Public Gardens, the branches of the weeping willows swayed over the edge of the pond.

As he watched the man drop down on one knee to photograph his wife and children gathered beneath the statue, Nate dialed Emily’s cell phone again, impatient for her to answer. Two months ago, she’d left for college and they’d spoken on the phone most weeks since. But for the third time that day her line went straight to voice mail. As he was about to hang up, his handset beeped and he saw that she was calling in.

“So you’re on it as well?” she said. “The other two have been calling me all day telling me how deeply important all our friendships have been, Jason waxing on about how much he loves me all of a sudden. It’s so mid-nineties. They’ve never been to a rave in their life. You guys are all going to wake up depressed with jaw aches.”

“I’m not on Ecstasy. I’m not with them.”

“So what’s with all your calls? What’s the emergency?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I was just checking in, seeing how it’s going up there. Is your roommate still a hassle?”

“I don’t believe you’re not in a crisis, but whatever. We can talk about that in a minute. To answer your question, yeah, she’s definitely a problem. The whole vegan, bisexual, anti-NAFTA, Nader-voter situation I could more or less deal with if she’d just keep it to herself. You’d think she’d at least shut up when she meditated, but no, that’s when she chants . And she has the gall to warn me about the false consciousness of cynicism. She’s a cross between a Hari Krishna and a Stalinist. It’s obviously just an aggressive formation against whatever void of boomer parenting she suffered, but I don’t see why I should have to cope with it.”

“I need you to cover for me,” Nate said.

“Cover for what?”

“I told my mother I was going to visit you. I’ve been gone a bunch lately and I think she’s starting to suspect. I just don’t want her to worry, you know?”

“Where are you?”

“The Ritz.”

“Oh, my God. You’re with him! That is so hot. I mean I should probably be worrying about you as a friend or whatever, but that guy is smokin’. It’s so much easier for you guys. The boys in my art history class don’t even look at me they’re so busy checking each other out. They were comparing underwear brands yesterday. But what’s with the hotel?”

“He’s negotiating some kind of deal. They stay here all night.”

“And he asked you to come with him?”

Nate hesitated, not wanting to disappoint Emily by upending the image behind her playful envy. Besides, what sense could he make of his circumstance if it didn’t conform in part, at least, to other people’s more ordinary arrangements? How could he explain to her that despite all he and Doug had done they had never actually kissed?

“Do you miss Jason?”

“That drooling pothead? Maybe. I did meet this one guy in Intro Psych. He’s German, so at least he knows how to have a conversation. I don’t know. This English professor last week, he handed out the syllabus and told us we’d be reading nineteenth-century novels with heroes and heroines our age or not much older, and he asked if we thought our feelings were important enough to write books about. So this one kid said, how could his feelings matter if they didn’t have any consequences, like marriage or kids or your reputation? Of course, he looked like he was on meds, but it riled my roommate up enough to insist our feelings about politics mattered. Which I sort of agree with. But who wants to read a novel about some vegetarian’s journey to an antiwar stance?”

“Doesn’t it depend on how intense they are?” Nate asked, a little jealous that Emily got to spend her time considering such things.

“What do you mean?”

“Your feelings. I mean if they’re intense enough, they have consequences, right?”

“You’re really gone on this guy, aren’t you?”

Just then he heard a knocking at the door. “I gotta go,” he said. “He’s back.”

“Okay, lover boy. Take care of yourself.”

When Nate opened the door he was dumbfounded by the sight of Mr. Holland. For a moment the two of them beheld each other in bewildered silence.

“Nate. Hi there. This is Doug Fanning’s room, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said, unable to conceive of any reason he would be staying at the Ritz-Carlton on his own dime.

Stepping past Nate, Mr. Holland entered the room, looking about with a befuddled expression, which fell away as he took in the unmade bed and the clothes on the chairs and Nate’s knapsack lying on the floor.

Unlike Mrs. Holland, who rarely managed to hide her aggression toward Jason’s friends, Mr. Holland had always greeted them warmly. He seemed cheered by the idea that his son had friends at all, as inattentive parents often were, relieved by some vague notion of their child’s social success. He was friendly in a general way. But he suffered from no lack of focus now.

“Is Jason with you? Is he in the hotel?”

Nate realized he was being offered an escape route. If he could rope Jason into the story somehow and then get to him before his father did, he might save himself. But he couldn’t put the pieces together quickly enough.