I Thought You Were Dead (15 page)

She wrote her number on a piece of paper. He took it from her and thanked her.

He wondered if there was a way to salvage the situation. Nothing occurred to him. When she said she was tired and wanted to go to bed, he thought for a moment and decided he'd rather get in his car and drive home. It was late, but failing again in bed that night would be too much. He wanted to scream, punch a hole in the wall, beg her not to go —
order
her not to go — but if she was going to be in Paris thinking about him, he wanted the image that lingered to be a positive one. He told her he wasn't pouting or trying to be dramatic. He just wanted to go home. He tried to smile.

“Have fun in Paris,” he said, rising to go. He turned around again when he'd reached the door. “You really do deserve to be happy. I mean it. That's what I want for you.”

He wanted Stephen to choke on a croissant.

Thus when Paul's friend Murph called to ask him if he was still interested in the Red Sox tickets, a Saturday afternoon game against the hated Yankees, starting at three to accommodate national television, Paul apologized and said he still wanted to go but couldn't get a date to use the other ticket. Tamsen had told him, on the phone, that she didn't like the way they'd left things and wanted to see him before she left. About what? Paul wondered. Did she need to break up with him before she went to Paris? She said she'd be driving up that night, though she'd have to leave early the next morning. Murph said he'd be Paul's date, as long as Paul didn't try to get him drunk and take advantage of him.

“When has anybody ever had to
try
to get you drunk?” Paul said.

“Point well made, my friend,” Murph said.

Paul hoped a Yankees-Sox game would take his mind off
Tamsen's going to Paris with Stephen. Murph told Paul to meet him at the will-call window. Paul arrived early and bought Tamsen a Red Sox cap at the souvenir shop across the street from the ballpark for her to wear on her trip. Paul hoped it would remind Stephen, every time he saw it (even in the photographs they looked at later), of Tamsen's split loyalties — assuming she wasn't driving up to give him bad news. He kept the receipt, on the chance that he would need to return the hat. Murph was a corpulent man with white hair and a florid face. He looked something like Tip O'Neill would have looked if he'd let himself go. The seats were incredible, boxes seven rows from the field, just to the third-base side behind home plate. Paul thanked his friend and asked him how much he owed him.

“Tut-tut,” Murph said with a thick Back Bay accent. “Your money's no good here. You want a beer?”

Paul nodded. Murph made his way to the concessions area, and when he returned, he was carrying a tray containing four beers and a gigantic box of Cracker Jacks. “I get the prize in the Cracker Jacks,” he said, handing Paul the tray.

“Jesus, Murph,” Paul said. “I thought not even the pope could buy four beers at a time in Fenway Park.” The strict limit was two per customer.

Paul drank his beers, and when they were gone, Murph went and got four more, commenting that he suspected management watered down the beer so that the fans didn't get too hammered, especially during Yankees games. With the sun on his face, Paul closed his eyes and enjoyed the buzz in the air, the gentle, rolling purr of the crowd, the smell of fresh-cut grass, and the spicy aromas of bratwurst and Italian sausages emanating from the grills beyond the Fenway confines. He loved the famous Green Monster, the forty-foot wall in left field, not because of the unique dimensions it gave the park, or the odd caroms it created when
balls bounced off it, or the way it forced opposing coaches to alter their strategies. He loved it because of how it kept the city out and made you feel as if you were watching the game inside a fortress. Murph kept the beers coming, particularly after Paul told him the woman he'd been seeing was going to Paris with her other boyfriend.

“But I must warn you,” Murph said. “I have only one rule, and that is that one does not discuss girlfriends or wives at Fenway. If we must discuss such things, I know a pub in Jamaica Plain we can go to after the game where the barmaids make the girls at Hooters look like the Bulgarian Women's Choir.”

The Red Sox lost the game in the eleventh inning when one of the Yankees' third-string utility players — it was always a goddamn third-string utility player — hit a home run in the top of the inning.

Paul begged off joining Murph at the pub, explaining that he had to get back. He'd switched from beer to Diet Cokes at the seventh-inning stretch, aware that he would be driving home on the MassPike, where state troopers patrolled for impaired drivers, particularly after sporting events. Traffic was slow out of downtown Boston but picked up by the time he reached Newton. Yet he found himself unable to drive much faster than fifty, even after traffic cleared, because he could not shake the feeling that he was driving to his doom, in which case there was no hurry.

Why else would Tamsen be driving up to see him before her trip, if not to break up with him or part ways, however she defined it? Yes, it was possible that she simply wanted to see him. If that was true, it could wait, but if she had something else to say to him, something important they had to talk about, well … that could
really
wait.

He pulled off the interstate at a rest stop in Framingham to
think. He sat in his car, thinking. He looked at his watch. Thinking wasn't working. It was approaching eight o'clock, the sun sinking low in the western sky. He didn't want her to come visit, but what could he say to stop her? Whatever it was, he would have to think of it in the next fifteen minutes or so if he wanted to catch her before she left her house, given the time she'd said he could expect her.

He finally went inside the rest stop, shouldered his way through the lines of travelers waiting to order their food at the McDonald's, and found a pay phone on the wall between the men's and women's bathrooms. He didn't know what he was going to say, but he told himself honesty was the best policy. As her phone rang, he watched a truck driver playing a video game called
Road Rage.
Getting it out of his system, one hoped.

When he heard her answering machine, he hung up, fished the piece of paper she'd given him from his back pocket, and dialed the number to her cell phone. The ring sounded like any other phone he'd ever dialed. He noted, as it rang, that every single person working behind the counter at the McDonald's was morbidly obese.

Perhaps because he was thus distracted (he later excused himself), when her voice mail announced itself, he impulsively decided to go with the next best policy, which was dishonesty. He had to say something, or she'd worry. A white lie, he told himself, knowing even as he spoke that he was veering from white into somewhere between battleship and charcoal gray. He told her he'd stopped at a rest area on the way home, but when he got back to his car, it wouldn't start, so now he had to deal with that. He told her he'd be fine, not to worry, but he couldn't say exactly when he'd get back to Northampton. He said he hoped she hadn't left Rhode Island yet and told her to have a great time in Paris.

He hung up, banged himself on the head with the receiver, then hung up again. The damage was done.

The best-case scenario was that she'd get the message, buy his story, skip the visit, go to Paris, and have such a terrible time that when she got back, she'd forget to ask about his car trouble. As he stood in line at McDonald's, waiting to order something for dinner, he worked through the remaining scenarios. One was that she wouldn't get the message in time and would drive to his house and wait there for him, which meant he couldn't go home. She would probably check her home machine or her voice mail, get his message, and turn around, but he still couldn't go home, on the chance that she might go to his house and wait for him anyway. He didn't dare call to check his answering machine because Tamsen might have let herself in and might pick up the phone. Worse still, she would get his message, get in her car, drive to Boston, and then head west on the Pike to stop at every rest area to find him and rescue him. He wouldn't put it past her.

After he'd eaten, he went to his car, took an adjustable wrench from his tool box, and loosened the cable on his battery, so that when he tried, the car really wouldn't start. Then he went to sleep in the backseat. If she found him, it would look as if he'd been telling the truth.

He'd had better nights.

When he got home the following morning, he played back a message on his answering machine from Tamsen. She said that she hoped everything was all right and that she'd call him when she got back. At least she hadn't driven all the way to find him missing. The damage was minimal, but it was damage all the same.

He pictured Tamsen and Stephen in Paris, laughing gaily, wearing berets and striped shirts and smoking Gitanes and
agreeing that Paul was a loser and she was better off without him. He pictured them clinking their wineglasses together, toasting their future.

À votre santé.

Merde.

H
e went to the Bay State the next night, but it did nothing to lift his spirits. D. J., Mickey, and McCoy were at the end of the bar. Brickman was in the corner, talking to a sweet-looking doe-eyed blond at least a dozen years his junior. McCoy moved down three stools and bought Paul a Guinness.

“Who's Bricks talking to?” Paul asked. A charming guy when he wanted to be, Bricks had flirted with countless younger women before, but somehow this girl seemed too young, too innocent. Bricks drove a Porsche. He would offer the girl a ride home, and she would see the car and say yes, and why not? She was an adult, presumably. Tonight, for some reason, Paul found it annoying.

“Don't know,” McCoy said. “You hear my news? I'm moving to Paris. Maybe at the end of the summer.”

Paul was shocked. Nobody ever moved from Northampton.

“Why is everybody going to Paris?” Paul said. “You know, that thing about the French liking American jazz players in France is just a myth. They hate jazz in France. They hate Jerry Lewis too. They hate everything.”

Brickman and the doe-eyed blond rose from the table and left. The girl was laughing, tipsy, perhaps already thinking of the story she would have to tell her friends back at the dormitory tomorrow.

“If he touches her,” Paul joked, “swear ta God I'll put him in the hospital.”

“He could get a room next to Bender,” McCoy said.

“What's Bender doing in the hospital?”

“Heart attack.”

“What?”

“Why does everybody say that?” McCoy said. “Am I mumbling? He. Had. A. Heart. Attack.”

“Bender can't have a heart attack,” Paul said. “Bender spends five hours a day in the gym. If he can have a heart attack, I should be dead. How?”

They'd found him on the bike path out by the mall after he'd cycled to Bread and Circus to buy organic produce.

“Poor Bender,” Paul said. “What hospital is he in?”

“I don't know,” McCoy said. He called out, “Does anybody know what hospital Bender is in?”

D. J. and Mickey shrugged.

It was raining as he walked to his car. He took stock. Bender had had a heart attack. His father couldn't speak. Stella was old. Mortality was everywhere he looked. When he got home, he lifted Stella onto the bed, where she lay with her chin on her paws. The Red Sox were playing in Oakland, the game only in the fifth inning, though it was past midnight on the East Coast. He listened to the game on the radio and to the rain drumming against the top of his window air conditioner and tried not to think about where Tamsen was or what she was doing.

He got online the following morning.