The Emperor of Any Place (29 page)

“It’s a damn sight better than pretty good.”

“Okay,” says Evan. He’s leaning against the doorjamb but feels the urge suddenly to stand up straight; if not quite at attention, then at least in a position where he could “hop to it,” if commanded. It’s amazing how the guy can zap you of confidence with a word or two. Even in an apron.

“Talked to Ronald Lee,” says Griff.

“Who?”

“Your father’s lawyer. We’re seeing him Wednesday, fourteen hundred hours, if you can fit it into your busy timetable.”

“Okay. Uh, what’s that in human time?”

Griff turns and glowers. Then returns his attention to the dishes.

Go on, Ev. Grab a tea towel and start drying. Let’s turn this into a family movie. Maybe the two of you could go out and play a round of miniature golf.

“I came across some life-forms in your fridge that might be used for chemical warfare,” says Griff.

Evan nods. He knows the culprits: the Tupperware containers he had avoided, hoping his father would one day attend to them, which was obviously the same strategy his father had adopted in reverse. “Dad and I had this thing,” he says. “One of us would invite someone over every few weeks or so for dinner so that we had to clean up.” Evan has reason to think that this is where a normal person might actually manage a chuckle. But Griff shows no sign of doing so.

“Does that live here?” he says. He nods his head toward Evan’s amp, in the corner of the kitchen where he left it that night a million years ago when the world as he knew it ended. The guitar is there, too. He hasn’t had much inspiration to play.

“It usually lives in the rec room,” he says. “I could move it down there. Maybe you’d like to give it a shot. I could teach you some chords.”

“No thanks.”

“Something by the Doors, maybe?”

Griff favors him with a wry expression and scrubs at a ceramic bowl so hard, Evan expects it to burst in his hands. He wonders if he’s suddenly remembering what went down last night in the living room. Then Griff ’s hands loosen, and he looks up at the window. Not
out
the window, but at it, as if there were a secret message written there that was only visible when the light was just so. He speaks.

“When the music’s over . . .”

Evan feels a chill climb up his spine. “Excuse me?”

Now his grandfather’s vaguely evil grin deepens. “It’s the song Clifford used to play all the time.”

“Oh. Right. The Doors. Not your style?”

Griff shifts down into glare mode. “When I saw your room last night, it was hard to believe you were his son. But the truth is you’re a lot like Clifford when he was a kid. Never missed the opportunity to fire off a round or two in passing.”

Evan resumes his rest post on the doorjamb. He shakes his head at this whole new brand of military metaphor that’s found its way into the formerly peaceful land of Any Place.

The sink empties with a resounding gurgle, but the old man doesn’t strip the apron. He turns his attention to the toaster. He gets baking soda out of the cupboard under the sink and makes a paste of it with water in a saucer, then begins to scrub the toaster with a toothbrush. Evan didn’t know they had baking soda. Probably didn’t; one of the things the house was low on and important enough to add to the late-night shopping expedition. How had they ever gotten by without it?

“You seem cocky this morning,” says Griff. “Must be all the sleep you’re getting.”

“I didn’t get to sleep right away last night.”

Griff nods. “Correct. I wandered out back sometime around one. Saw your light on. Found myself wondering what you might be up to.”

Evan hugs himself. “Gathering intel.”

That stops Griff. He looks over, his eyes full of knowing.

Nice work, Evan.
He feels like one of those stupid kids you hear about every now and then who shoves his arm through the tigers’ fence up at the Metro Zoo and loses it. And then for some dumb reason, Evan feels ready to lose another.

“I’d kind of like to set up some ground rules,” he says.

Griff throws him the kind of amused, sidelong glance Jean-Claude Van Damme might give a rabid squirrel.

“It was good of you to come and help out. I appreciate it. Really. Thanks for phoning the lawyer and thanks especially for cleaning the toaster. But I don’t want to hear any more crap about my father. Okay?”

Griff grunts. “Yes, sir,” he says.

“And you can stop with all that, too.”

“All what?”

“The soldier stuff,” says Evan. “‘Better get some sleep, soldier.’ Stop calling me that!” says Evan. “This isn’t Fort frigging Sumter.”

“Watch it, kiddo.”

“No, with all due respect,
you
watch it. This is my house and you can call me Evan. It’s your middle name, too, so you should be able to remember it.” The scratching of the toothbrush stops for a nanosecond, then starts up again, but slower. Evan wonders if it’s his toothbrush. He takes a deep breath.
Where is this going?
The tiger is looking hungrily at his leg by now.

“Just so you know,” says Griff, not looking up from his work, “when I call someone ‘soldier,’ I mean it as a compliment.”

“Oh, that makes me feel a lot better,” says Evan.

Then Griff pushes himself away from the sink and whips off his apron.

Evan steps away from the doorjamb, ready to move — move fast — his hands out to his side as if he had a couple of firearms ready to draw. He doesn’t run. And, as it turns out, all Griff had in mind was to frighten him. He stands there folding the apron carefully, a grim look on his face. It makes Evan think of all those times in movies he’s seen an American flag folded over the casket of a dead soldier. He feels a renewed sense of unrest.

“You just about done?” says Griff, turning to face him. “Because I’ve got a pile of bills to go through, accounts to settle.” Evan nods, feels a little bit proud of having said his piece, and only a little bit stupid. “At some point you need to know how to deal with the bills yourself.”

Evan nods. That much is true. But it isn’t going to happen today.

“I’m going out,” he says. He makes eye contact with the man, daring him to have anything to say about it. Griff turns to look out the window. His mouth is shut, but his tongue seems to be busy, as if there are hard bits of words stuck between his teeth and he’s trying to find exactly the right ones to express what he thinks of this disrespectful boy. He turns and looks at Evan through hooded eyes.

“Might I expect you home for dinner?”

Evan shrugs. Wishes he had some killer line to throw at the old man. But his ammo is used up. Ammo?
Fuck, now I’m doing it!

“I don’t know,” he says. He turns to go.

“We need to talk, son,” says Griff.

Evan waits, his back to Griff. “What about?”

“That call you got last night.”

Evan’s glad he hasn’t turned around, but he doesn’t kid himself — Griff can see his reaction to the remark. His whole body has tensed up. “What about it?” he says.

“Like I tried to tell you around about midnight — albeit I was a little rough — there are things you don’t know. Things that are none of your business.”

Now Evan turns, slowly. “So that gives you the right to listen in on my phone calls?”

Griff shakes his head. “No sir, Evan. I did not do that. But I did pick up the phone directly after you got off. Tried star-six-nine. Now that’s a good service, that is. Told me the last call that came to the house was from the six-five-zero area code. Leonardo Kraft, to be precise. Am I right?” Evan nods. No use denying it. “What’d he tell you, Evan?”

“He told me the same thing you just told me.”

“Come again?”

Evan sighs. “Mr. Kraft didn’t know Dad had died. And when I asked him what he was after, he told me it was none of my business.”

Griff raises his eyebrows in surprise. Then lowers them and levels his gaze at Evan. “That all?”

Evan feels the anger rising in him again, can’t resist it. “Actually, he did say something else, something really important. He said he was sorry for my loss. I mean this guy never met Dad, but he was nice enough to think his death might affect me.”

He waits, his heart pounding. Is that pain he sees in Griff ’s eyes? Damn, he hopes so. Griff goes to speak, stops. Evan waits. Griff nods, clears his throat.

“So Clifford was talking to Kraft,” he says.

Evan can only stare at the old man. Cannot believe that this bastard is so heartless. A murderer? The tiny suspicion of doubt he felt earlier dissolves into grim certainty. “I gotta run,” he says, regretting the choice of words the minute they’re out of his mouth.

Steeling himself, he crosses the threshold and enters the pristine kitchen. He passes Griff by, swiping the car keys off the little table as he goes, expecting Griff to lash out. At the back door he stops, waiting for some last disparaging comment, some dig meant to get his goat. It doesn’t come. And so Evan takes his goat and leaves.

The mall: an oasis of
got it
in a world of
gimme.
Evan’s not much for the mall, but at least there’s no
Tengu
here, as far as he knows.

It’s certainly far from being a desert island,
he thinks, as he settles on a bench. The bench looks like it was ripped off from a Victorian park and painted mauve. He squints, looks around. The floor is a sort of anemic sand color, come to think of it. There’s a palm tree in a nearby clothing store, although it’s only papier-mâché. And, through half-closed eyes, a lot of the people do in fact look like the walking dead. There’s even a lagoon. It’s about twelve feet across, complete with water fountain. A little kid is walking around the rim of it, leaning over to gaze at the glittery coins at the bottom of the pond, holding tight to his mother’s left hand while she talks into a cell phone in her right. Evan checks his own cell; he’s got half an hour to kill before Rollo gets off work. Better here in Nowhere than back home in Any Place. And as if on cue, the instrument dings to announce a text message.

— Didn’t mean to be mysterious, orphan boy. It was an invitation to dinner. If you’re lonely or whatever. No need to reply.

Right, one mystery solved: Olivia, the Oreo girl. An invitation to dinner: what’s this about? They don’t really travel in the same circles. For one thing, he doesn’t own aviator goggles or a bandolier. So it’s just neighborliness? Whatever it is, Evan can’t deal with it now. But he’s touched. He tries to think of something to say. Can’t. There’s too much else on his mind.

What is he going to do?

He doesn’t know his father’s lawyer — didn’t know he had one, any more than he knew he still had a grandfather until that last night, talking to Dad. What if Griff tries to talk the guy into making him a legal guardian or something? The disgust wells up in him.

There is this sorrow deep down inside him, squashed under an avalanche of anger. It’s as if Griff showed up and stole his grief from him. Ha! His name even sounds like grief.

He punches in a number on his cell phone.

“Leo Kraft, here. Hello?” It’s his real estate voice.

“Hi. It’s Evan.”

“I can see that. What is it, Evan?” He sounds busy and guarded.

“I thought I’d better tell you that Griff knows you called.”

“Oh, damn.”

“I guess he heard us on the phone, and after I hung up, he did the star-six-nine thing.”

“What’d he say?”

“I told him you didn’t know my dad was dead. And when I asked you what you wanted, you told me it was none of my business.”

There is a pause at the other end. “Do you think he bought it?”

“What’s there to buy? I don’t really know anything.”

“But do you think he knows you’ve got the book?”

“Why should he?”

Leo sighs. “Oh, hell. I am sorry. There was no way I wanted you to get caught in the crossfire.”
Now
he’s
doing the whole warfare thing. It must be infectious.
“Listen, Evan. All I can say is what I said last night. The less you know the better.”

Evan wants to shout at him that if he knew any
less
he’d be put away in some institution for morons. He sighs. It’s not true. He knows just enough to be totally frustrated. And it’s not Leo’s fault. He knows that, too. “I finished the book,” he says.

“Ah.”

“So, I get why Griff is being . . .” He can’t think of a polite word.

“Cautious?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope you’ve hidden it well.”

“Yeah, I think so. Anyway, I figure even if he found out I’d read the book, it doesn’t rub off on you, because it was just there on my father’s desk, right? I’d have found it all by myself. So I read it. Big deal. No harm, no foul.”

“Right,” says Leo, but he doesn’t sound convinced.

“What am I supposed to do: unread it?”

Leo laughs. It has the too bright, clear sound of someone who has to laugh a lot professionally.

“Can I ask you something?” says Evan. “Something else?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“The story is so surreal — so . . . I don’t know — crazy — and yet your dad, he wasn’t crazy, was he?”

“Not at all. He was a brilliant man. Revered — a scholar.”

“Yeah, I got that. But then . . .” Evan stops. He’s not even sure why he started.