"Okay, getting dizzy," she said, swiveling to a rest. Doug stood near her like a bodyguard, toeing at the tamped-down mulch. She looked out at the airport, the planes coming in. "Weird, isn't it? Here we are, two people, enjoying the night-- and then Davis, sitting alone in a hospital room, waiting."
Doug watched her eyes. Something was happening in them. "He got a tough break."
She tracked a seagull flying over the docks. "One little thing-- that's all it takes. You turn the wrong corner one morning and suddenly-- you're Davis, you're on the outside of life, looking in."
"Some terrible luck."
"No," she said, looking down now. "It's worse than that." Her arms were inside the swing chains, worrying the stem of the rose in her lap. "It's actually my fault."
Doug followed this through. "How is it your fault?"
"I was the one who set off the alarm at the robbery. Not him. They beat up the wrong person." She sighed to forestall tears. "And I watched them do it. I could have spared him, I could have told them it was me. But I just stood there and let it happen. I took the easy way out, because that's what I always do."
"But come on. You were scared."
"He's marked for life now, and he did nothing wrong-- nothing to deserve it.
I
did this to him."
"Look," said Doug, dropping into the swing next to her. "You gotta find a way to stop thinking about this. Is it the FBI? They still coming around?"
"The agent, he assumed that it was Davis who hit the alarm. And of course I let him. Admitting otherwise wouldn't have been the easy way out." She looked up into the sky over the water. "Why am I this way? You wouldn't have lied."
"Me?" said Doug, going for it. "I wouldn't have told them anything."
"What do you mean? Anything like what?"
"Nothing beyond the basics."
She turned, confused. "Because you think the agent suspects me?"
"This is one of the differences between growing up in Canton and Charlestown, I think. People who don't deal with cops that much, such as yourself, you probably tend to believe all that stuff about the Search for the Truth. Forgetting that cops, FBI, anybody with a badge who has a lot of power-- they're just people like anyone else. They have lives, they have jobs to protect. And how they do that is by clearing arrests. Getting results. Which also means, if they can't catch the one who did it, sometimes they'll settle for the one who fits. And that person is usually the one who talked the most."
She stared. "You're serious."
"How often do you hear about convictions overturned, confessions coerced? We learn early where I'm from, don't talk to the cops. Or if you do, get a lawyer present."
"You're saying I should hire a lawyer?"
"No, too late. Don't do it now. You lawyer up now, you better believe they're going to start taking an interest in your story, a very close interest."
She nodded, assailed by his logic.
"You did your civic duty," Doug told her. "And that's great. You don't know anything, right?" He pressed her. "Right?"
"No, I don't."
Doug nodded, relieved, easing off. "So leave it at that. Personally? It seems to me like you're hanging on to this robbery too tight. I think you know this. It's bad, what happened to your friend. And bad, sure, what happened to you."
She was eager to cut him off. "I know, it doesn't seem... a robbery, okay. Masked men, guns, the van. Other people have been through so much worse-- I
know
this. But it's like I'm stuck. I thought I was going to be murdered, I was going to die on the floor of the bank... and my life seemed wasted." She winced, frustrated that this sounded like whining. "If only I could get that morning back. Or like Davis, have it wiped away forever."
"Here's the thing," said Doug. He had put this pain into her face, maybe he could take it away again. "I'm outta my league here, I know. But I can tell you this. For a long time in my life, I was The Kid Whose Mother Left Him. That's all I was, the sum total of my existence. And it led me into a world of trouble. Right now, I think you're The Girl Who Got Robbed."
She stared, listening hard.
"Now," he went on, "I happen to like The Girl Who Got Robbed. I don't mind her at all, she looks pretty good to me. But I think she's not all that thrilled with herself."
"You're right," she said, thinking, nodding. "You're really right."
"You can get past this."
"I have to. I know." She sat up, squaring her shoulders, a harbor breeze lifting her honey-colored hair with its fingers. "I'm sorry for getting into this with you, bringing you down. I'm going to cheer up now, I promise. Grow up too. Count to three."
"One, two, three."
"Ta-da." She smiled. "Happy face."
They sat there in swaying silence, drifting away from and back toward each other.
"You know what you are, Doug?" she said. "I just figured it out. You're decent."
"Oh." Doug gripped the swing chains. "Christ, no."
"You are, and more than that-- a lot of people who are decent, they were
raised
to be decent, you know? Like me-- good parenting, good manners, blah, blah, blah-- which is all fine and good until a little pressure comes into your life, and then you crumble like stale bread. But you-- you've made mistakes, you've said as much. You're not a saint or anything, but you know how to be good. Your decency is earned, not learned."
Doug said, "I don't know how well you know me," but she mistook his discomfort for modesty.
"Can you tell I've been thinking about you?" she said.
"Oh yeah?"
She swayed a little more, bumping her seat gently against his, eyes bright, grateful, and deep. "Yeah."
17
Demo
T
HE CHARGES CRACKED LIKE a volley of gunshots from the head of the cliff, wind whisking away the smoke tails, sheets of rock dropping like a hand had opened up and let them go, sliding off the stratified face into rubble and dust.
Doug and Jem squinted at the rip and crumble, feeling the earth shudder in complaint, watching the gray dust arise. They stood near the silver-sided break wagon and the hard hats lining up for Winstons and coffees, Doug wearing a loose, long-sleeved shirt reading
Mike's Roast Beef,
Jem a white sweatshirt bearing a peeling green shamrock under the arched word
T O W N I E S.
The hood was snug over Jem's head and ears, emphasizing his small skull. Both carried their old yellow helmets under their arms, like blue-collar jet pilots.
"Look at you," Jem said.
Doug watched a hard hat cup a blue pill into his mouth like it was his morning vitamin. The break wagon also sold speed at $3 a pop. Doug remembered the jolt of a blue with a beer back, ten or ten thirty in the morning, kicking the workday into gear. "What?"
"You."
"What?"
"All the way up here, you're in fucking La-La Land. You get laid last night?"
"Yeah. I wish."
"Anybody I know? He do you right?"
Doug smiled in spite of himself, watching the dust spreading in the distance.
"What is it, then?" said Jem. "You found Jesus or something?"
"I did. In a condo over on Eden Street. Nice place."
"Yeah, I hear he's a good carpenter. I would of thought maybe you ran into him at the Tap."
Doug went cold under the white sun. "What are you talking about?"
"Splash the bartender said he thought he saw you in there, few nights before."
"That Saturday night, all of us?"
"No, fuckhead. Recent."
A dismissive shrug, a good one. "Different Doug MacRay."
"I see. Maybe the
old
Doug MacRay, come back to us like Jesus on Eden Street. All I can say is, you
better
not be drinking on the side. I been waiting too fucking long. Your first drink back, I'm there at your elbow, or else."
Relief seeping in. "Speaking of abstinence-- how's that going for you?"
"I remain pure."
"Get the fuck."
"My mother's grave."
"Yikes, that's where you do it?"
"I'm pulling two full workouts a day. Check these guns."
"Hey, cowboy-- all the same to you, I'm gonna take a pass on standing here, checking out your shoulder hard-ons."
Jem studied him one-eyed in the sun. "You got laid, motherfuck. Come clean."
Doug smiled big. "I always do."
The whistle blew the all clear and Jem found his hat under his arm. "Let's go see Boner and get this shit over with."
In the distance, a demo crew in hard hats, goggles, and face masks advanced on the settling dust. Doug could smell the grit from where he was, remembering the feeling of it stopping up his pores. "You ever miss this?"
Jem twirled his helmet like he used to, the
J. Coughlin
fading on the back, the head strap inside worn to the foam. "You fucking kidding me?"
"I miss it a little. Not the commute, the bullshit, eating lunch out of a truck, fucking dust in my hair."
"You like blowing shit up."
"No. I just like watching it fall."
"Well, second thought, going at a wall with a crowbar, that wasn't so bad either. The old wrecking crew, right? Hammers, sledges, and pickaxes. Walking into some condemned building in our dusted overalls like,
'Warriors, come out to play-ayy...' "
Doug shrugged. "I just liked watching it fall."
Inside the construction trailer, they waited for Billy Bona, Billy saying, "Yup... yeah... sure...," into the phone and strangling the cord in his hands. Ten years before, while tearing out a condemned building alongside Doug, a falling cinder block claimed the nails of the last three fingers of his left hand. Doctors told him they would grow back twice as thick, but they never grew back at all. Now Billy was the demo foreman in his father's company and only used his helmet-less fingers for pointing at guys and signing things.
He hung up and came across to shake hands. "The original thick-dick micks."
Doug said, "Billy Boner."
Jem said, "'S'up, Little Italy?"
"You know how it is," said Boner, sliding a clipboard off his desk, "this and that, that and this. I got two minutes here, literally. What's the squeal?"
Doug said, "Highway project, huh?"
Jem was twiddling Boner's Rolodex like a kid on a visit to his dad's office. "This economy, I take it where it comes," said Boner, distracted, not liking his cluttered desk touched. "What you got? Potato famine suddenly? Coming back to do some real work?"
"Never, man," said Jem. "Just wanted to go over terms of our deal."
Boner frowned, looked at Doug, concerned. "Fuck's wrong with the deal?"
Jem held up a
Bonafide Demo
paperweight showing the Leaning Tower of Pisa. "Know what I'd like to see on this instead?" he said. "That chef from the pizza boxes, twiddling his Rollie Fingers mustache, you know? That would be good."
Boner said to Doug, "What's going on here, MacRay?"
Doug had forgotten Jem's sourness toward Boner, it had been that long. "It's all good, Billy," said Doug, dropping
Boner
for the moment. "Nothing wrong with the deal. Everything's cool."
"'Cause your guard dog here is slobbering all over my desk."
Jem smiled his smile, challenge accepted, and went around to sit in Boner's big chair, putting his mud-caked boots up on the desk. "Seat's a little hard, Boner. Your ass is much more accommodating than mine."
Boner gripped his clipboard two-handedly. "If this is some fuckin' poor man's shakedown, you can both-- "
"Whoa, whoa," said Doug. "Hold on. How well you know me?"
"
Used
to know you good, Duggy. Going way back. So what the fuck?"
Doug said to Jem, "Get out from behind the man's desk," just to be polite, not really expecting Jem to move, which he didn't. Doug said to Boner, "Everything with the arrangement is going great, everything's fine. We just think we might be hearing hoofbeats, so to speak, so we wanted to come up here, make sure all our bases are covered."
"A reminder," said Jem, picking up a pad of pink phone-message slips, flipping it at Boner. Boner made no move to catch it and the pad bounced off his arm, falling to the floor.
"Not a reminder," said Doug. "A courtesy call, let you know you might have visitors coming up here with badges, questions. Or maybe not, we don't know."
