He looked at Becca and was glad that this unfortunate ball game was nearly over. He considered a shower.
“You seemed really — uncomfortable, when we were eating.”
He turned back to the tube. Bud Harrelson called John Franco in from the bullpen. A good choice, though his relief work was a bit off these days.
“No. It was fine. Just talk. The usual.”
She got up. He saw her out of the corner of his eye as she walked over to him. She draped her arms over him and pressed herself close. He smelled her hair, the wonderful clean smell. She leaned up and kissed his cheek.
“You made wonderful —”
Another kiss.
“Burgers.”
He smiled.
Franco’s first pitch was a ball.
“Shit,” he said.
She reached down, in front, rooting into his underwear. Will grinned. “Come on, John,” he said. “Throw something with a little action on it.”
Her hand grabbed him, squeezing him with an authority. But now he enjoyed teasing, watching the game while she worked on him, pressing against him.
Franco threw a strike.
But it didn’t seem to matter anymore.
“Hmmm,” she murmured against him. She was up on her tiptoes. She took a swipe at his ear with her tongue, tracing a wet line around the outer lobe and then down his neck.
She pulled at him, hard, then gently, letting her fingers work an ancient magic.
Who cares about baseball? he thought.
He shut the tube off with the remote and turned to Becca just in time to see her slip out of her robe.
* * *
Later, in the dark, he turned away from her. He looked at the window, heard the rustle of the trees outside. The tiny squeaks of air trying to whistle their way into the house.
Becca threw her arms around him and pulled herself close. Sleep came fast for her now, and — while still breathing a bit hard — Will knew that this would take him away, a perfect moment, in just an instant.
And he lay there, suspended, detached, feeling safe and warm for the first time today.
Loved, protected.
God is in His universe.
And all is well with the world.
Slowly, like a helium balloon freely drifting away, higher and higher, into a perfect sky, he lost hold of consciousness in such a blissful, dreamy way .
.
.
But the phone rang.
Shocking, hard, the jangling bell sound tearing through his peace like a knife.
It rang.
Becca’s arm slipped away.
She grunted, turning to the glowing dial of the digital alarm clock. “It’s eleven-fifteen,” she said. Her voice was sleepy. “Who’d call us at eleven-fifteen?”
She didn’t like getting calls this late. Usually they were drunks who misdialed.
“Is Joey there? Uh, can I speak to Joey?”
There’s no Joey here.
“Where’s Joey?”
And then — the real dumb ones dialed the same wrong number again.
“Hello, Joey?”
Will sat up. The phone rang one last time.
And even then — somehow — he knew that his life was about to change forever.
He picked up the receiver.
* * *
21
The voice said, “Hello.”
There was a pause. Then, again, “Hello, Will.”
As if I should know who this dingbat is, Will thought. As if it was someone I know .
.
.
No one
I
know calls at 11:15 at night.
Unless something was very wrong.
“Who is this?” Will said. “Do you know what time it is?”
Then the caller said his name.
He said: “It’s Ted Whalen, Will. Ted. From St. Jerry’s …”
Will paused. He turned and saw Becca watching him.
Waiting for a reassuring smile, or for him to slam down the receiver, muttering about late night drunks who don’t know how to touch seven buttons without screwing up.
But he didn’t smile.
Who is it? she mouthed.
“Will?” the voice said again. “Are you still there?”
“Yes .
.
.” Then, with some difficulty, “Still here, Ted. Ted .
.
. it’s kinda late.” Will paused, dumbfounded. He always expected ghosts to rear out of his past. But he hoped some would stay away forever, melted into the woodwork.
History.
Ted Whalen was one of them.
I thought that was understood, Will thought.
I thought we all knew that.
“I wouldn’t have called you if I didn’t think it was important. I just got off the phone, Will. I’m in Los Angeles. And .
.
. I guess I just forgot the time.”
For a second, Will almost said, How are you doing? How the hell has your life been for the past twenty-five years?
But he said nothing.
Maybe he’ll go away, Will thought.
Whalen’s voice rumbled. He cleared his throat. “I just got off the phone with Jim Kiff.”
At the name Kiff, Will immediately saw one image.
Saw it as if he were there — now — standing in the darkness.
Kiff, standing beside Narrio’s body, laying claim to the blame while freeing the rest of them to run away. Kiff, claiming his heritage, his fucked-up life.
Tim Hanna once said that he had gone to see Kiff weeks later. Just for a few beers in Germantown. So did Whalen. But Will never did, never wanted to.
“Kiff .
.
.” Will said. “Let me put you on hold.”
He pressed the button down and turned to Becca. She watched, playing their game of guessing who’s on the phone. Playing this time, and losing.
“I’ll take this downstairs,” Will said, hearing how distracted his voice sounded. “I’ll tell you about it later.” He shook his head.
As if it were beyond fathoming.
And he walked out of the bedroom and downstairs to the phone in his small office just off the living room. Fumbling, he turned on the artist’s light that craned over his cluttered desk. He picked up the phone and pressed the button below the blinking light.
“Still there?”
“Yes,” Ted said.
Will thought he should say something, ask something … as if it were a normal call, at a normal hour.
“How are you?”
“Good. Not bad. I’m in insurance …annuities .
.
. tax shelters. That kind of thing. Doing well …”
“Great,” Will said. “I’m always reading about Tim Hanna.”
“Yes,” Whalen said.
Tim Hanna had done better than well for himself. Tim Hanna had done so well that Will couldn’t imagine that he might be the same person that they had gone to school with.
It was hard to imagine that one of New York’s most powerful businessmen and his old friend from school were the same person. Tim Hanna owned real estate in three cities, primo office complexes, shopping developments, and a small, upscale movie theater chain. He owned a piece of the Palace, in Atlantic City.
He had powerful friends. He hung out with the glitterati. At least once a week his face was in the paper. A fundraiser. A social occasion. Politics was rumored to be the next step.
Good for him, Will thought.
Will never heard from him.
And he never called Tim.
“And you, Will?” Whalen said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good, Wh —” He paused, about to call Whalen by his last name, the pull of adolescence still strong .
.
. powerful. But instead he said, “Ted.”
Another pause. Will heard the bed of static on the line. Not a great connection.
He waited for Whalen to tell him what led him to call. Will waited, growing more nervous, more upset at the way the past can suddenly become the present, at the way a wall of decades could just melt away.
As if it were yesterday .
.
.
“I tried calling Tim, but you know how things are with him. Left a couple of messages. He was in Boston, maybe Washington. They didn’t know. But, well .
.
. Then I had your number from the alumni directory.”
“Uh-huh.”
Whalen cleared his throat again. “It’s about Kiff, Will. I stayed in touch with him. A call now and then, just to see what he was up to. Which wasn’t much. I guess I felt a bit guilty .
.
. responsible .
.
.”
Will noted that this man on the phone didn’t sound much like the Ted Whalen that he knew. Guilt? Responsibility?
Strange words coming from the cynical Ted Whalen.
Time does make for odd sea changes.
“He had a real bad time of it, Will. Real bad. He went to Fordham for a year, dropped out, and then Uncle Sam grabbed him.”
“Vietnam?”
“Yeah. He had twenty-twenty vision and he was more educated than most of the ghetto kids that they were feeding into the meat grinder. So he made lieutenant and got to take everyone out into the rice paddies looking for the enemy.”
“Poor bastard.”
There was one sorry platoon to be in .
.
.
“Yeah. Then he came to see me when he got out. He came, and stayed for a week, then two, until finally I had to, like, just tell him to leave. He was a mess. You know, a vet. Hell, when he looked at me with those eyes — shit, Will, they were like pie plates. I was scared. I didn’t know. I thought he’d kill me.”
But the point? Ted Whalen. What’s the point? Why are you calling me?
“But he left?”
“Yes. And then I’d get these cards, scribbled postcards from Tempe, Arizona .
.
. then Mexico City .
.
. a donkey wearing a big sombrero. I thought he was into drugs, dealing stuff. But he wasn’t .
.
.”
Will heard a sound upstairs. Becca walking around. Or maybe one of the kids getting up to pee. Good night, Mommy, Beth always trooped in to say. G’night, Daddy.
Except I’m down here now. Down here, listening to this .
.
.
Then, on the phone, Will heard Whalen take a drink. The clink of ice cubes, a rattle followed by a slurp. Whalen cleared his throat again.
A nervous tic. A habit. Or is Whalen scared?
And where is all this leading?
“The postcards stopped. And I was glad. I didn’t want him in my life. I was married at the time. I had a kid.”
From the tone of Whalen’s voice, Will suspected that those things were in Whalen’s past.
“Then — about three years ago — I got another postcard. It was a scrawl. Two sentences, barely decipherable. No address, but the postmark was clear enough. It was Peru. Fucking Peru! Can you imagine? And it said, ‘I’m coming home. Because there’s no getting away, no running .
.
.”
“What?” Will laughed. He was losing interest in the adventures of Kiff.
Crazy men lead crazy lives.
“Running from what?”
Another clink, ice in the glass, and then, “I didn’t know. But I started thinking, and thinking, and I got kind of worried.”
Will doodled on a yellow pad in front of him. Mindless scribble, circles, and arrows, and —
“Shit, I thought about that night, Will. And Kiff taking it on the chin. And — I didn’t know what the hell he was going to do. God, he was a fritzed-out vet at this point. He was capable of
anything
.”
“And he had
your
address. I see what you mean.”
“I thought that maybe he just wanted to tell the whole story, everything that happened back then.” Will noticed that Whalen didn’t mention Narrio’s name. “They’d open the records, our names would be brought up again — a lot of hassle.”
“That’s ancient history,” Will said, none too confidently. “No one’s interested.”
“I thought — I thought that maybe Kiff would want to get back at us.”