The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (19 page)

“What happened?” I said.

She was quiet for a moment, listening to Griff rooting
around in the living room. “Nostalgia happened,” she said finally. She went
back in the bedroom and closed the door.

I stood looking at the shirt in my hands as though it were
some kind of alien artifact. I heard the screech of springs and in a moment
Griff and Zane were in the kitchen. Griff had his jeans on now.

“Here.” I held his shirt out and he yanked it over his head
and threw his arms through the sleeves.

“I’m sorry, guys,” he said. His face was flushed. “This was
a huge mistake.”

“It’s all right,” I said reassuringly, happy to be that way.

Zane grabbed the aloe plant from the counter. We put on our
boots and our jackets and gloves, hats, scarves, and when we were walking down
the rickety staircase for the umpteenth time that day, Griff said, “What the
fuck
was I
thinking
?”

And I knew he hadn’t been thinking at all, but remembering.

M O N D A Y

“How was that cot, killer?” Griff said, holding out
to Zane a wide wooden tray piled high with the fixings of a room-service
breakfast. Steam seeped from beneath shiny metal plate-covers.

“Hard,” Zane complained. “And usually I don’t mind having
hard things against me all night.”

“TMI, dude.”

Zane smiled and began sampling Griff’s wares, lifting one
dish cover and then another. He chose a corn muffin and a little goblet of
fruit. “Your robe’s very classy.”

It was one of the hotel’s complementary bathrobes—white
and fluffy, it fell against Griff’s skinny legs like a cape. “Comfy as hell,
too,” Griff said. “I may just gank it. Butter?”

“No thanks.” Zane pulled the paper off his muffin and took a
bite. Yellow crumbs tumbled onto the floral bedspread that covered his knees.

Griff turned to me with the tray. “And for you, sir?”

I uncovered a dish and found a stack of French toast
underneath. I grabbed a fork. “How are you this morning?”

He put the tray on my bed and sat down with one leg curled
beneath him. “All right. I was so orange last night, though. Man! But I think
it was good.” He took the cover off another dish; this one contained pancakes.
He rolled one into a tube and dunked it in a carafe of syrup. “I mean, now I
know it’s really over between me and her.”

The night before, I’d fallen asleep the moment my head hit
the pillow on the luscious bed—mere minutes after Griff checked us into
the hotel and we drew straws for the foldaway bed. I woke once at
flashing-12:00 a.m. and saw Griff standing at the window in his white robe, the
vertical blinds bent around him like a bad disguise. He stood there a long time
looking out, then he sat on the edge of his bed with his arms folded, staring
blankly into a corner. A number of times while I watched him through squinted
eyelids I almost got up to sit with him, to tell him things would be OK, but I
couldn’t bring myself to say that, not after I’d felt so terrible about him and
Beth maybe getting back together. So I just watched.

“I really know it’s totally over,” he went on, looking at
the end of his rolled-up pancake before popping the last bite into his mouth.

“Yeah,” I said, “at least now you know.”

We ate our breakfasts slow, lingered on morning cartoons and
talk shows. I was in the shower, the last to go, letting the hot water pound
against my face, when the bathroom door opened with a
woosh
of chilly air and someone knocked on the curtain. It bulged
inward in the shape of knuckles.

“Come in,” I said, joking, thinking it was Griff—then
afraid it was Zane. Because Zane really might’ve.

“You
wish
,” the
visitor said. Whew. “Dude, it’s almost noon. We need to check out!”

“Noon? I thought we had plenty of time?”

“Time flies when you’re kicking it Ritz Carlton–style.
Damn, it’s hot as a crotch in here.”

I heard the door close behind him and I laughed all alone in
the tub.

We checked out of the hotel with five minutes to
spare and helped ourselves to the individually-wrapped Starlight mints on the
ornate reception desk. Griff put the room on his AmEx. Then we strode like a
gang, like a band, across the plush carpet to the brass-trimmed revolving
doors.

As the three of us were spinning round Zane slapped the
glass. “The plant!”

“Awh, dude,” Griff said from his wedge, going around again.
No one had gotten off after the first revolution. “Forget about it.”

“No,” Zane said, “it’s good luck. I’ll go get it.” He got
off in the lobby again.

Griff and I got off too. “You don’t have a key,” I said
after Zane.

“I’ll get it back,” he said, halfway to the reception desk
now. “Be right back.”

“What’s with the plant?” Griff said to me. We sank into
sleek purple armchairs in the lobby while Zane gestured to the woman at the
desk.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s my fault for telling him it was good luck,” Griff
said. “This chair feels good. Is this real velvet, do you think?”

“Maybe they’ll sell it to you.”

“Maybe they will. I’m in a spending mood.”

A bellhop pushed a cart stacked with luggage in from the
street. CNN was on the flatscreen TV that hung on the wall, muted but
closed-captioned.

“Was there something going on outside last night?” I said.

“Outside?”

“I saw you at the window.”

“Oh.” He unwrapped another mint and put it in his mouth,
pushed the wrapper into the front pocket of his vest. “No, I just couldn’t
sleep. Blue balls.”

“That’s what it was?”

“Yeah—blue balls.”

“Why didn’t you just breed the dolphin?”

“I did eventually.”

“It’s weird how not shooting can hurt so bad,” I said.

“I remember the first time I got it, in high school, after a
night of making out with this girl. Sophia Bedard, her name was. And I thought
it was food poisoning. That was the only explanation I could come up with. I
thought I was dying.”

“You told me about that.”

“It’s a Griff classic.”

“I wonder if whoever coined the term
blue balls
had synesthesia.”

“Haha. He probably did. Although it’s more of a vicious pink
for me.”

Zane returned with the plant and we went through the
revolving door again. I thought it was unseasonably warm outside until I
noticed the heat lamps above the door.

“Enjoying your stay?” the doorman said. He wore a long blue
coat and a top hat.

“Our vacation is over, but yes it was enjoyable,” Griff
said.

“No luggage?”

“No luggage, no—but plenty of baggage.”

We took the T into Brighton and walked a few blocks more to
Mason’s Garage. My Jeep was parked in the front, its floor covered in white
paper bearing the blurry outline of workboot prints. Griff’s stuff looked
undisturbed.

The woman in the office leaned forward and peered at me
through thick glasses. “Heard you fixed a fan belt with staples,” she said with
a smile when I got out my wallet to pay.

The city stretched out behind us, fake-looking like
a page in a giant pop-up book, and then shrunk away as we sped south on
I-93. I took up a permanent position in the passing lane. I was eager to get
home. I was always eager to get home, but even more so when I knew Griff would
be getting there at the same time. It felt like I hadn’t been home in weeks,
and I wanted nothing more than to change my clothes and brush my teeth and
drink a beer with him by the fire.

We cruised down along the South Shore, past Quincy and
Weymouth. We went over the bridge and soon we were back on the flexed bicep of
Massachusetts, Cape Cod. We passed snow-covered businesses and houses as the
road widened and narrowed and widened. In the rearview Zane smiled when I
looked back at him.

“Can you turn around,” Griff said suddenly, “and go back
there?”

“Back where?” I looked in my mirrors but saw only trees.

“To that Volkswagen dealership we just passed.”

“OK...”

“I want to go look at the cars.”

“Cars. OK.”

I turned around in the lot of an antique shop. We drove up
the street, and drove and drove—long enough to make me wonder if Griff
had imagined the dealership.

“I was actually thinking for a while about whether to stop,”
Griff said sheepishly just as I was about to ask.

After five minutes we came to the dealership and I turned
into the lot. Rows of cars were dusted with the remnants of hastily brushed-off
snow and it was obvious from the paths snowblown around them that none had been
driven since before the storm. They looked like big toys packaged in Styrofoam.

“Can you buy a car same-day?” Griff asked.

“I think so,” I said. “You have to get insurance and stuff.”

“You’re buying a car?” Zane said, leaning forward between
the seats. His arms hung chummily around the headrests, his hand lay against my
left shoulder. I leaned an inch to the right.

“Maybe if there’s one I like,” Griff said. He gazed out the
window. “I like Jettas. Maybe a Touareg—that’s fun to say.”

“Touareg,” I said, looking out over the rows of
identically-shaped profiles. “Well do you want to go talk to someone?”

“Yeah.”

I parked beside a yellow Beetle with white plastic
protectors on its hood and doors and the three of us went into the dealership.
Two men in suits and ties were talking, one seated behind a desk, one sitting
on top. They stood up when we came in.

The salesman at the desk called us
gentlemen
. He wore a blue tie. Their eyes were hungry and with a
glance they seemed to haggle over who, if we were in a buying mood, would get
the sale—it was an eye-to-eye version of rock-paper-scissors. The face of
the man with the black tie went into a smile and the other man sank back into
his chair and turned his eyes to the window.

“Great weather for looking at cars,” black tie guy said,
extending his hand first to Griff and then to Zane and me. “Jim Ashby, hello.”
He was tall and thin and his neck slouched forward at the shoulders, giving him
the appearance of an upright hockey stick. “What can I help you folks with?”

“I’m looking to buy a car,” Griff said.

Ashby’s eyes lit up and the other salesman’s mouth turned
down into a little frown.

“That’s convenient,” he quipped, smoothing his
salt-and-pepper comb-over, “because I’m looking to sell a car. We were
made
for each other.”

I grinned humorlessly but Griff was all business. “Is that
something I can do same-day?” he asked. “Because I’m kind of just—passing
through.”

Ashby told him that was no problem. “First let’s see if we
have anything you like,” he said with a mustachioed grin, “and then we’ll iron
out the details.”

He pulled an overcoat off a metal coat tree by the desk and
led us outside. Griff walked at his side talking about turbo engines, standard
versus automatic, the pros and cons of diesel.

Zane leaned close to me and whispered, “Is Griff OK?”

“I think so. Why?”

“First he pays for the hotel all by himself, now he’s buying
a car? Is he having some kind of post-breakup crisis?”

“He might be,” I said, watching Griff talking to Ashby. “But
he can afford to have one.”

“Is he rich?”

I let Griff and Ashby get a little ways ahead of us, then I
explained to Zane about Griff’s spiteful but wealthy late grandmother.

Zane’s mouth fell open a little.

“I know, right?”

“I get
socks
from
my grandmother,” he said.

We caught up with Griff and the salesman at a cherry-red
Jetta across the lot, its hood encrusted in ice.

“This one here’s the model you mentioned,” Ashby said.
“Leather seats. Enough goodies to give you a cavity.” He rested his gloveless hand
on the roof and then yanked it back from the cold, a clumsy misstep in the
workings of his charm.

“I like the model,” Griff said, “but it would have to be in like
dark gray or black or something.”

“The man wants gray,” Ashby said, “the man gets gray.” He
smiled and for the first time it occurred to me that he was flirting with
Griff. It gave me the willies. “Let’s see. Ah—over here.”

Glancing at the stickers on the cars’ windows, he led us
down the line to a charcoal gray version of the cherry-red car. He rattled off
features about the airbags, the tires, the turbo, the headroom, the trunk space.
Griff nodded.

“Can we test drive this?” he said, forehead pressed against
the driver’s window.

“Of course, certainly.” Ashby rocked back and forth on his
heels, either from the cold or at the prospect of a sale, I couldn’t tell. “Let
me run and get the keys. It’ll just be a second.”

Zane said he’d be right back too and jogged over to the
Jeep.

“This is the perfect car for me—don’t you think?”
Griff said. He kicked the tire. “I’ve wanted a VW ever since I saw that
commercial from years ago. The one where they’re driving at night and they get
to the party and then decide they’d rather just keep driving?”

“This isn’t just a spur-of-the-moment thing, though, right?”
I said as gingerly as I could. I was all for Griff spending some of his money,
but fifteen minutes ago I didn’t even know he was in the market for a car; I
was sure he didn’t either. “Not a post-breakup... crisis?”

He was peering in at the back seat, hands cupped against the
window. “I’ve had this money for almost a year and I haven’t bought anything
more expensive than a fucking iPod,” he said. “Yeah, it probably is spur of the
moment—but fuck it.”

“But you have no job. How great is your credit?”

“Who needs credit? I’ll pay cash.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.”

“You know?”

“Yeah. Why not? Fuck it!” It felt good to say so I said it
again. “Yeah! Fuck it!”

He threw up his hands and laughed. “Fuck it!”

Zane returned with the aloe plant just as Ashby came
striding over, the tassels on his loafers bouncing merrily with each step. I
was surprised when he handed over the keys and we were allowed to go off
driving by ourselves.

We got in, me in the passenger seat, Zane in the back with
the plant. We poked at the dashboard and tugged on the handles, squeezed the
leather seats softly and experimentally like our first touch of a girl’s
breasts (Griff and me, anyway), and tapped our knuckles against the windows.
Everything seemed sound. I opened the glove compartment and reached around
inside. The instrument panel told numbers in red.

“God,” Griff said, “it smells good, doesn’t it? It smells
like something I’d buy in a jar and pour on a sundae.”

The Jetta drove smooth and with the steady whir of a
turntable spinning recordless. White sped by in a blur and Griff had a huge smile
on his face. After last night I was extra happy to see it.

“Saw it written on a so-what’s-say,” he sang. “How the heck
does that song go? Pinka pink. Pink moon, we’re on our way.”