Resurgence (5 page)
“I already thought about that and how the album will have to be marketed so as not to appear blatantly insensitive. And I’ve been thinking about the inevitable repercussions from canceling a major tour—the domino effect—and wondering how they’ll be able to hold a funeral or memorial service or whatever during Holy Week. Sunday’s Easter, you know.”
He didn’t know. And he’s chagrined not to have considered these other practical matters, even though they don’t affect him. That is, after all, the way his mind used to work until he derailed himself with an overactive imagination and overdeveloped sense of responsibility.
They order coffee and stick to neutral subjects until right out of nowhere she asks how hard it would be to book Royal Albert Hall on short notice, and follows that up with a series of seemingly unrelated questions that when strung together are only electrifying.
This wisp of a girl with her unruly Pre-Raphaelite hair and serenely go-straight-to-the-heart-of-the-matter mind must not be allowed to escape. He’s about to say as much when his pager goes off. The call is the one he’s been waiting for, the only reason he wore a pager for the first time in weeks.
“The London office. I’ll be right back.”
He finds a secluded public phone, places the call and for the second time today is stunned speechless by news from the UK. He must have heard wrong. That cannot be true. First of all, a veteran user wouldn’t be apt to delay gratification by ingesting coke instead of snorting; second of all, Rayce Vaughn, for all his troubles, was never ever considered at risk for suicide.
On his way back to the table, Nate experiences an undeniable rush with the realization that all bets are off regarding his recently renounced behavior.
“Forget everything I just said about ignoring similarities and coincidences,” he says when he sits down, “and feel free to go on sharing my views.” Responding to Amanda’s puzzled expression, he explains that word leaked from the London medical examiner’s office confirms cocaine to be the probable cause of Rayce’s death.
“Preliminary findings indicate a massive amount of unusually potent product taken in by mouth.”
“By
mouth
?”
“He fucking swallowed it, Amanda, and the rumors have already begun. They’re saying it was no accident, because users of Rayce’s experience don’t
accidentally
swallow blow. Not in lethal amounts, anyway. I think we should be prepared to see his death ruled a suicide.”
“No way. He was so
happy
. . . at the party and, omigod, at the concert on Friday, he was
incredible
, he was off the charts and he couldn’t have delivered like that if he was getting ready to off himself and he couldn’t have been so up for the European tour if he wasn’t gonna see it through and . . . and . . . I have trouble even believing he started using again, let alone . . . Something’s
wrong
here, they have to be wrong about this.”
“I couldn’t agree more, and now I have to hope all my bridges are not burnt.”
Because it’s midafternoon on a Monday when everyone ought to be at work, Hoople Jakeway feels more at ease about parking in plain sight on Old Quarry Court. Of the many things observed on Saturday, one of the most useful has to do with showing up here on a weekend when more people are free to take notice. He won’t do that again even though a face-off out here in the open isn’t the worst thing imaginable. It’s the chance encounter and being outnumbered in a closed-in space that worries him most, as he hefts his tool case and makes the trek to the side door of Laurel Chandler’s garage. Just thinking about Saturday’s brush with more than bargained for produces sweat; he’d rather cut off Audrey’s head again than repeat any of that.
He forces the grade door as he’s done before, and sucks his breath in hard when it opens. The lawyerwoman’s car is in the garage. It’s not supposed to be there now; she’s not supposed to be home now.
For the second time in as many days, he’d chant oaths and swears if he knew any good ones. Instead, he crouches in the shadow of her car—the showoff version of a Jeep Wrangler—and readies for a face-off. When it doesn’t come, he braves up to enter the house with the expectation the Chandler woman’s in there and this is the chance he was denied on Saturday. But that expectation weakens in the kitchen, where the icebox door is propped open and the insides are stripped of everything but a box of baking soda.
The expectation fades altogether when he sees that the outside of the icebox has been stripped as well. And that’s all the proof he needs. There’s no need for a trip upstairs to look for missing valises and count empty clothes hangers; the absence of the age-yellowed children’s drawings that were stuck to the icebox with little alphabet magnets says plain as talk that the lawyerwoman’s gone away again and won’t be coming back for a long while.
Hoop leaves the way he came in, with shoulders back and head high, like he had every right to be there. On the inside he’s a churn of disappointment and fuddled purpose. Saturday’s limited success counts for nothing as he drives away with no set direction in mind.
Thirty minutes later, he’s on Route 22 like some homing device steered him to the neighborhood of the storage unit yard and the Family-Mart where he provisioned himself a week ago. But he’s not ready to talk to Audrey, and he’s not looking to buy anything else.
The only thing of interest right now is the car that moved up to pass in the outside lane and stayed abreast instead of speeding by. The occupants, three teenage tough guys banded together in the front seat of an old sedan with mismatched doors, are looking at him. They’re making fun of him, pointing, laughing, jeering, and mocking in a way that reminds of high school days in Bimmerman when he was taunted for riding a girl’s bicycle.
The temptation to do what he couldn’t do in the old days—fight back with any chance of winning—is so strong he can almost taste it. What he tastes for real when he cumbers himself from crowding the tormentors off the road, is blood from the place where he just bit through his lip, reason enough to take himself off the road till the old feelings run their course.
A quarter of a mile later he does a law-abiding exit onto an auxiliary road that connects a stretch of strip plazas and stand-apart businesses. After he’s rolled to a sensible stop next to a furniture store, he jumps out of the El Camino like it might be tainted with leftover rage and sees right away that the stick-on “Superior Home Maintenance” sign that was meant to make him look believable in Glen Abbey is upside down. That must be what the bullyboys were laughing at, a discovery that doesn’t bring any real relief because now he has to wonder if the people of Old Quarry Court laughed behind their window curtains at the very same thing. Now he has to wonder if he made himself a standout instead of a blend-in.
He peels off the sign, slides it behind the bench seat and turns his attention to a nearby combination motel and restaurant called The Speedwell. He locks the El Camino and walks the short distance to the restaurant entrance, where a sign says cocktails are served.
The bar here is nothing like the one at the pub in the West Village; it’s a whole lot smaller, quieter, without any fake features to make you think you’re in another country or century, and at four-thirty in the afternoon, empty except for a nontalkative bartender and a lone drinker reading a real estate guide.
Hoop downs a shot and a beer a lot faster than is sensible. But maybe he’s done with being sensible. And patient. He places a twenty on the bar and orders another setup. After one more, he takes a look at the menu, and in the spirit of the recklessness gripping him, asks for the chopped chicken liver platter that comes with marble rye, capers, cornichons, and scallions; all of it stuff he’s never had before.
He sits at a table for the food part of his intemperance. He can’t hear the TV as well as when he was seated at the bar, but he can hear it well enough to know that the international entertainer they’re talking about on the five-thirty newsbreak is not one that concerns him.
The only part of his meal he doesn’t care for is the little shriveled berry-like things that look like animal droppings and don’t add that much to the taste. He scrapes them aside and finishes everything else on the platter—including the fancy lettuce leaves that cupped the chicken liver. This earns him another drink—just the whiskey this time—then a couple more at the bar, where he starts thinking about the drive back to the North Bergen motel.
He can make the drive—he’s held a car to the road with more liquor in him than he has now—but the way his luck’s been going lately, what if some other drunked-up driver hits him? Then what’s he going to do? If he did have a run-in with the cops, how would he explain the money in the gym bag, the Bowie knife in the tool case and other stuff—like those little waxpaper envelopes the headache powder comes in that are so easy to mistake for something else?
Now he’s scared himself so bad he can’t even risk sleeping it off in the El Camino—not even if he moves it to a less noticeable spot. And now he needs another drink if he’s ever going to hatch a plan.
Two more whiskeys later, when he thinks he has figured out what to do, he sees that the place has filled up while he was dithering. If he happens to make a jackassed-fool of himself by staggering when he leaves, he’ll have spectators. And if any of them should happen to laugh, they could get more than bargained for.
He settles the food and drink bill and makes it to the lobby of the motel without staggering. There’s some gloat involved when he rents a room for the night even though he has other paid-for lodgings.
In the parking lot, he’s not quite so surefooted on the approach to the El Camino to fetch the gym bag and tool case. On the way back to the motor lodge he steadies himself on other parked cars and a light pole till he reaches the outside stairs to the second floor, where they told him his room is.
He’ll have to mind every step if he wants get to the top of these stairs without falling because the treads are see-through metal meshwork that makes him feel like a dog walking on glass.
Queasiness stays with him after he reaches the solid surface of the second floor and gets worse when he finds his room and has all kinds of trouble opening the door with the plastic card they gave him instead of a regular key.
Inside the room, he’s too dizzy to bother making comparisons to the North Bergen lodgings. He does, however, see that the television set is a whole lot newer, gets a whole lot more channels, and comes with a remote control that he chucks aside as he belly-flops onto a bed that commences pitching and tossing like a tilt-a-whirl at a roadside carnival.
At Laurel’s request, they’re behind closed doors in the winter parlor without phone, telly, or, as she put it, majorly distracting architectural details to deal with. She’s nestled in a deep armchair with one of the housecats on her lap, only the second time today that she’s been more than an arm’s length away from him.
Colin stops pacing and takes a chair at the game table, where Gemma Earle left a drinks tray. “Tell me again why David’s on his way here at this late hour? Makin’ a round of courtesy calls, is he?”
“Very well, I’ll tell you
precisely
why,” Laurel says. “When he phoned with the preliminary toxicology report, I
asked
him to come. I think we both need a face-to-face with someone close to the situation and I’m sure David can use a break after the day he’s had. Is this going to be a problem?”
“Not for me. The current crisis transcends any problem I might have with tolerating his company. And I’m not the one who had the row with him on the plane and shunned him for most of the flight and gave him the cold shoulder when we went our separate ways yesterday.”
“That was . . . unfortunate, but those issues are necessarily set aside—transcended, as you say—in light of new developments.”