The Duration (16 page)

“Ain't gonna work,” a voice said behind me.

I turned around. It was Tim-Rick Golack. He was standing on the sidewalk.

“No shit, Sherlock,” I said. Paused. I didn't disagree with the conclusion, but I also wasn't sure how much he'd heard. “What's not gonna work?”

He stepped up onto the ramp.

“They run the place pretty tight,” he said. “Most of their clientele are both rich and image-conscious. I can't even get past the guard booth.”

I nodded.

“Thanks for the info.”

We were silent.

“I heard you saw my brother the other day,” he said.

I shifted my weight slightly, holding it on my back foot, ready to launch an overhand right.

“Are we going to have a problem about that?” I asked. Seemed like a dumb question. It was his brother.

Tim-Rick looked down and shook his head.

“Nope,” he said. “Not about that. My brother's a drug addict. Like your boy. But unlike you, I walked away. I haven't talked to him in years, and I plan to keep it that way.”

I shrugged, but held my position.

“What is it with you and him, anyway?”

Tim-Rick looked at me.

“Who? Robbie?”

“Chickie,” I said. “What was all that bullshit about?”

Tim-Rick looked uncomfortable. He was quiet for a long time.

“I don't even know. Just, something about the guy. It's like he thinks he should get all the breaks.”

I frowned.

“I can pretty much guarantee he doesn't think that.”

Tim-Rick shrugged.

“Well, he gets them anyway.”

I snorted.

“You have any idea about the breaks he's gotten?”

Tim-Rick scrunched up his face a little, preparing to be un-PC, maybe.

“Oh, right. One perv gets a little handsy in the choir and now this kid is the golden child? Please. Bad shit happens to everyone.”

That was true enough. But, come on. Some kids get dumped. Chick got more than that.

“Careful,” I said. “He's my best friend.”

“I know he is,” Tim-Rick said. “And I'm glad he's yours and not mine. I didn't mess up his knee or do anything else to him. I don't owe him anything. I don't owe anyone and nobody owes me. This life, man. Get with it.”

There was shit here I didn't have the bandwidth for. I decided to try and steer the conversation back to transitional pleasantries. If we were clear on his brother, I was gonna mosey.

“Well, good for fucking you,” I said. “Whatever. Nobody's looking for handouts anyway. But, hey, I guess I should warn you, I think I let the cat out of the bag a little when I saw your brother.”

“About what?” Tim-Rick Golack asked.

“About Ginny,” I said. “I hear you're going to be a father.”

Tim-Rick blanched.

“You told my brother?” he asked, slightly panicked. “Jesus Christ.”

Then he took a deep breath and spat into the snow. He raised a finger and pointed it at me.

“Stay out of that,” he said.

He turned to go back inside, but then reversed himself and headed off down the street.

“Yo,” I started to say. “I'm sorry!”

But he was gone.

Goddamn, this shit was exhausting. First Chick and now this dude. I was legitimately happy for him. Or for Ginny at least. I didn't know it was classified info. Ginny wasn't fooling anyone.

I gave it a second, then went back in and cut a path through the Friday night crowd to our booth. It was closing in on 9
P.M.,
and the bar was packed and sweaty. It felt desperate. Unsie looked impatient.

I slid in across from him and coddled my beer.

“So he still wants to break into Head-Connect,” I said, putting my phone on the table. “He says he saw the safe in the lobby, and he thinks the rhino horn is inside it.”

Unsie nodded.

“There is a safe in the lobby,” he said. “But there's nothing inside it.”

“You've seen it?”

He looked at me.

“I've seen a safe in the lobby. An old one. That's where we meet for the Nordic tours. The thing is decorative. It's not the Royal Bank of Scotland or something.”

I banked with the Royal Bank of Scotland, and they sucked.

“For a guy who hates going inside, you sound pretty sure. Tim-Rick Golack just told me that he couldn't get past security at the front gate,” I said.

“Is Tim-Rick Golack an Olympic skier? Because I am,” Unsie said, veering as close to ego as he got. “Does Tim-Rick own a business that lets Head-Connect claim to locally source their cross-country and snowshoe excursions? Because I do.”

I acted impressed. It was impressive, but I was still acting.

“Wow,” I said. “So can you get us in?”

Unsie put his hands flat on the table and took a deep breath.

“No.”

I looked at him.

“Why?”

He glanced around the booth.

“Come on, Pete.”

“What?”

“They are my biggest client. They trust me. I have friends who work there. I also live in this town all year round, with my wife and, soon, my kid. I have a reputation. You are not seriously asking me to jeopardize those things to help Chick—who, sure, is a very important friend, an old friend, but who is also out of his fucking mind—look for something that is (a) not there in the first place and, (b) if it was there, would be of no real use to him in solving whatever problems he has to solve?”

He looked me in the eye.

“You aren't asking me to do that, are you?”

He gave me a hard stare, and I let him because he'd earned it. That was a compelling goddamn speech.

“Yeah,” I said finally. I didn't want him to be right, but he was. “I'm asking you to do that.”

Uns looked sad.

“I know you are,” he said. “And I am saying no, reluctantly but firmly. There's a limit, you know?”

I waited a second, but he wasn't reconsidering.

“You're right.”

I sipped my beer and thought about it.

“I just want to help the guy.”

Unsie nodded. “Sure. But why?”

Why? Because that's what friends did.

“Figure out why,” Unsie said. “Then you'll know how.”

All right, fucko. Let's not push it too far.

My beer tasted bitter.

“I wish Jimmer was here,” I said. “Jimmer would help me.”

I wanted to make Unsie feel as bad as I did.

“Only say my name,” said a voice from near the side door. “And I shall appear.”

I looked over.

It was Jimmer.

Jimmer was older and slicker, a slight weight at the jowls, but the rest of him seemed more svelte than in youth. He was wearing a shiny belt and gray slacks. Maybe it was the clothes that were streamlining him. His skin looked moisturized. His teeth were bright and straight. His hair was wet without being wet, but expensively so, not like the waitress at Gina's. He came over to our booth and I slid out to hug him. I'd never been happier to see someone in my life. It was like seeing Chick again in the opposite bed, except sober and uncomplicated. I couldn't stop staring. I think I thought if I stopped staring, he'd up and vanish.

“Jimmer!” I said.

“I'm like fucking Dumbledore,” he said, raising a finger. “But, uh, it's James these days.”

I looked at him. Couldn't stop smiling. I kissed him on the cheek and he relented.

“To everyone else but you guys, I guess” he said, sliding into the booth next to Unsie. Unsie threw an arm around his shoulder and that was it.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Like, what? What are you doing here?”

Jimmer scanned the table for a menu and, seeing none, shrugged. He pulled out a very shiny phone and glanced at it with practiced nonchalance. It glowed subtly like a glowworm.

“Bat signal,” he said, tilting his head toward Unsie. “And I was able to set up some business in Boston to make it work.”

“Business in Boston?” I said. “I live in Boston. Do you want to stay with me?”

I felt like a fanboy.

“Uh, yeah, man. Sure. Of course.”

“Cool,” I said. “What's your business, anyway?”

Jimmer was still looking around at the people in the bar. He seemed fascinated in the way one might be watching an early music video, or visiting a museum display on primitive societies.

“Eh, VC stuff. Not very interesting.”

“VC like venture capital?”

Jimmer nodded. “I help a few startups out. With money.”

“Wait,” I said. “Are you an angel investor? Goddamn, man! That's awesome.”

Jimmer sort of shook his head without actually denying anything. It seemed more embarrassed than corrective.

I didn't really know much about angel investors except that they sounded cool and usually had shitloads of money.

“Do you have like shitloads of money now?” I asked, before I could rein myself in.

Unsie laughed and Jimmer looked even more embarrassed. I might have felt more embarrassed too if I hadn't seen Jimmer vomit onto a Northampton girl's lap in the summer before our junior year, thus ending the evening for all of us. Or if I hadn't been there that night when, after a fairly minor rejection by a hot sophomore named Jemma Bergdorf, Jimmer lay down in the middle of Walker Street and waited to get hit by a car. It was more a symbolic gesture than anything else, because it was late and Walker Street was long and well-lit and lightly traveled, a gesture sort of like walking into the sea at low tide while carrying one of those noodles, but I'd been there for it and had sat on the double yellow line by his head, and we'd talked it through until he stopped feeling so bad.

Jimmer sort of nodded his head back and forth for a second, and then leaned in.

“Okay, so, right, you've heard of Sment?”

I nodded, then shook my head no.

“We digitize odors so that they can be transmitted electronically. That's my company.”

It took a second to process.

“You digitize odors? I didn't know you could do that.”

“Right, like the smell of your mom's hair, or your grandfather's cologne, or gingerbread, or oatmeal cookies, or whatever. You click the link, download the scent, it fills the room. Endless applications.”

My mind was blown.

“How do you do that?”

“Well,” Jimmer said. “You know how music is made up of sound waves? Well, odors are made up of smell waves. We figured out how to digitize those.”

I looked at Unsie. He was smiling.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Yeah,” Jimmer said. “It's more complicated than that, but the algorithms would bore you.”

“Huh,” I said. “And people will pay you for it?”

“Well, Yahoo! did,” Jimmer said.

We sat silently for a second.

“So,” I said. “How much do you know?”

Jimmer gave an exaggerated shrug.

“Something about our boy busting into Head-Connect, some drugs, arrests, sounds like a clusterfuck.”

I nodded.

“He's on a vision quest.”

“That's Ginny Archey,” Jimmer said, looking over at the bar, like he'd spotted a manatee.

I nodded.

“And this guy's gonna be a dad,” he said, clapping Unsie on the shoulder.

“Indeed,” I said. “All grown up.”

Jimmer looked at me.

“How about you,” he said. “You okay? Still seeing Kylie?”

I made a face.

“No more Kylie, I don't think. Or Kelly either. But I'm good. Other than not knowing where I'm going to sleep tonight, I'm good.”

Jimmer raised his palms up, as if I'd missed the obvious.

“Well, I can fix part of that,” he said. “You're staying with me, of course.”

I finished what was left of my beer.

“Sounds great,” I said. “Where are we staying?”

Jimmer looked at me. Then he raised his arm to signal the waitress. When she got to us, he raised three fingers.

“Tequila,” he said. “For my compadres.”

Then he looked at me, with as hard a look as I imagine he could muster.

“Where do you think we're staying?” he said.