Travelin' Man (13 page)

“What kind of mistakes?” KC asks.

“There were days when we didn't think we could make it. Days when Miriam couldn't bring herself to get out of bed. Days when we didn't think even our faith would help pull us through. I never knew, never saw it coming, KC. I thank the Lord it was me, not Miriam, who found him hanging from a beam in the basement. I don't know why he did it. God may forgive me, but I can never forgive myself for being so blind.

“He never told me he was unhappy. I thought I knew him and I didn't. There's nothing so terrible that life's not worth living anymore. He could have told me anything, KC. Anything. I was his father, KC, and I loved him and nothing could have ever changed that. But he didn't know that. He was my boy and he thought he couldn't come to me. He was my son and he didn't know there was nothing he could ever do, anyone he could be, that could make me turn away from him.”

The Coach pauses to take a long sip of his whiskey. They sit quietly, listening to the comforting sounds of an ordinary summer evening. Cartoon voices squabble on the television in the living room. A hunting dog paces in its pen, barking for its dinner. Boys challenge each other to keep playing until it's too dark to see the ball. Snatches of loud music, rap and classic rock and power country, blare from the open windows of cars driving down the street.

“Promise you'll never be afraid to come to me. With anything. Anything. Promise me, KC. Will you promise me?”

“Yes, sir.”

They sit quietly until the Coach finally breaks the silence.

“So you want to go see the Emeralds tomorrow?”

“I have to watch Ba and Ong.”

“We'll take them with us. I bet they'd like that. Trust me. Everything is going to be okay, KC,” the Coach promises, putting his arm around his shoulder and giving him an affectionate squeeze. “You believe me, don't you?”

It's odd, smelling whiskey on Coach Freeman's breath. KC carefully considers his words before answering.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

The last guest of the morning, the Legend himself, the greatest power forward in the local franchise's history, isn't scheduled until the top of the hour. None of the callers in the queue has anything of interest to add to the current topic at hand, at least nothing that can be said over the airwaves. The first commandment in broadcasting is to never, ever allow dead air and tormenting young Charlie Beresford for laughs is Sal Corelli's latest favorite fallback.

“Put that Ivy League education to good use, Boo Boo.”

Everyone who toils from six to ten A.M., five days a week, on Corelli and Crew, 820 on the AM dial, simulcast in stereo at 1340 FM, is saddled with a stupid nickname, the more ridiculous the better. Everyone. Even a lowly in-studio researcher like Charlie, the youngest and least experienced member of the staff and the only one who doesn't know a fucking thing about sports except for the few bits of baseball knowledge he'd picked up during those couple of months he'd followed KC Conroy around like a lovesick puppy.

“Good God, Sal. Stop torturing the poor kid,” the sole female member of the Crew clucks. Her face looks like it's been smacked flat with a skillet, but her deep, husky voice reminds Sal's audience, mostly men in the late forties through sixty-five demographic, of Kathleen Turner in her Jessica Rabbit days. Deirdre (a.k.a. Double D, which Sal swears is a reference to her initials, her last name being Desalvio, and not to her impressive cup size) is the voice of reason, the bemused and half-hearted scold, den mother to a pack of middle-aged men with adolescent ids, the only adult in the room. Sal's given Boo Boo some crazy research assignments the past few months, but Double D thinks this latest request is over the top.

The banter during the eight o'clock segment had meandered from bitching about the overpaid whiners who play for the local MLB franchise, to the latest rumors swirling around NHL players and who will become free agents after the interminable playoff season, to Sal's tirade about the rabbits and squirrels who think the vegetable garden at his weekend getaway in Bucks County is their personal buffet. A fan who works as an exterminator had called in to share a trade secret. Fox piss, available in both spray and pellet form, is the most effective rodent deterrent on the market. Corelli and Crew pounced on this unexpected opportunity to titillate their 5.8 AQH audience share with bawdy and off-color speculation about the best way to get savage animals to pee in a cup.

“Ah, well, Sal, technically rabbits are lagomorphs, not rodents,” Charlie says, setting the record straight.

“Huh? What? Lago-whats?” Sal sputters, playing the bombastic blowhard for comic effect.

“Lagomorphs.”

“Wow. That's my boy! That's some pretty impressive stuff! Did you get that, Double D?” Sal asks with mock seriousness. “I told you the kid is smarter than he looks. We're counting on you, Boo Boo. Okay folks, Big Pink's having a meltdown. We have to take a break. Don't go away. We'll be right back from the beautiful Borgata here in Atlantic City.”

The executive producer, called Big Pink because he starts chugging Pepto-Bismol at five-fifteen every morning, starts frantically barking at the sound engineer the second the mikes are off. The girl who screens the callers is quaking from a blistering dressing-down for putting through a fan who'd been banned from the show. These live remote broadcasts are a fucking son-of-a-bitch, a technical nightmare. Something always goes wrong and the crackerjack studio team of Killer Joe, Gizmo, the Annihilator, and Jo-Jo, the Dog Faced Boy—ninety-six years of radio experience among them—race the clock to smooth out any glitches.

“Hustle motherfuckers! Thirty seconds to air time,” Big Pink shouts. “You get the answer for Sal yet, kid? We're going live.”

Charlie's mundane explanation that the fox piss used in vermin repellants is collected from the drainage systems of animal pens on wild game farms is a big disappointment to the potty-mouthed Corelli and Crew. Fortunately the Legend is on the line, ready to announce his prognostications for the upcoming NBA finals. The highly opinionated Hall of Famer is on fire this morning. The incompetence of the Sixers' ownership. The complete mismanagement by the team president and his bootlicking coaching staff. The frustrating diffidence of the first-round draft pick point guard. Nothing and no one escapes his disdain and derision. The fans love arguing with him. As always, the discourse never rises above the lowest common denominator, all scurrilous insults and ill-informed opinions. It's a smooth ride to the ten o'clock sign-off with Charlie being called upon only once in the segment to confirm the average number of technical fouls per quarter committed by this year's squad. He removes his headphones at 10:01 and, standing to stretch his legs, finds himself facing an obviously irritated Big Pink.

“You're going into the studio when you get back to Philly, aren't you?” the producer asks Charlie before turning his attention toward the more urgent matter of the problem of Sal's displeasure with the sound mix of this morning's show.

Charlie had been planning on soaking up a few rays at the Borgata pool and playing a few hands of blackjack before driving home. Billy's doing his summer internship at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York, and the only thing waiting for him at the apartment is a microwave package of Hot Pockets in the freezer and a bony stray cat he'd argued against adopting. But he recognizes it's not a question, but a directive. Charlie makes a mental note to not be a fuck face to the lowest slug on the food chain when he becomes executive producer of a hit radio show.

“I will if you need me to,” he responds, doing his best impersonation of a lapdog eager to serve his lord and master.

“I'm not sure what I need yet. I have to talk to Sal about tomorrow's show. I got the Phillies' beat reporter for the
Inquirer
booked for the eight o'clock hour and the G.M. might be calling in. The Eagles' new defensive coordinator will be here for the nine o'clock segment. I'll probably want you to run a few queries and prepare some stat screens this afternoon.”

Charlie's tempted to ask Big Pink if he's aware that modern cellular communications can track him down and summon him to the studio at a moment's notice if he's actually going to be needed. But an open writer's position is about to be posted and Charlie needs the producer's support for a promotion.

“Aye, aye, sir,” he says, sounding chipper as possible and muttering obscenities under his breath as he slinks away, defeated by a superior force.

 

New Jersey is one motherfucking ugly place. It's a mystery why they call it the Garden State. Where are all the goddamn gardens? The entire state smells like an EPA hazardous waste site. The toxic industrial emissions of the refineries and chemical plants. The sulfurous rot of the coastal barrier marshes. Headache-inducing gasoline fumes from nine million registered vehicles clogging its toll roads. It's more like a sneak preview of the Apocalypse than a botanical paradise. “Goddamit,” he mutters as he wrestles with his uncooperative Levis, trying to retrieve the phone ringing in his pocket while speeding west fifteen miles over the posted limit on the Atlantic City Expressway.

“Oh, shit,” he mumbles, seeing the number of the incoming call. There's no escaping. He may as well pick up and face his punishment. The longer he waits the worse it will be.

“I know, I know. I'm so sorry. We'll do it tonight. I promise. Anytime she wants.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how well that phone of yours works when you want something, Charlie, but it always seems to be out of range whenever someone needs to reach
you
.”

The glittering towers of the Atlantic City skyline can indeed play ping-pong with cellular reception, but each and every one of his kid sister Madeline's texts had come through loud and clear last night. One every ten minutes. Like clockwork. For almost two hours until she finally signed off with a tirade of obscenities that would shock even her typically unfazed mother. The kid had every right to be pissed. She hadn't
asked
him for assistance. He'd volunteered to Skype with the tightly wound little perfectionist, an unfortunately unmusical sixteen-year-old, after she'd fretted over her inability to master an acoustic “Blackbird.”

“Ma, I'm a grown man. I have an important job now with a lot of responsibilities. I can't just drop everything to teach my little sister the correct fingering for a damn Beatles song.”

“I thought you told me they paid you to look up sports statistics on a laptop?”

He'd been on his third beer in the hotel bar with a few guys from the crew when the first text arrived. His guitar was in his apartment in Philadelphia because he'd forgotten his promise as soon as he'd made it. Besides, if she really needed help, she could find a hundred video lessons on YouTube if she typed in the word
blackbird.

“Charlie, you're going to be twenty-three years old this fall. It's time to pull your head out of your ass and start acting like a responsible adult.”

Sometimes Charlie tries to imagine some of his mother's colorful sayings rolling off the tongue of Clair Huxtable. She can be a real pain when crossed. He'd thought she would lighten up when she embraced the practice of yoga after recovering from cancer. But meditation and mala beads and breathing exercises haven't transformed her into a benign and smiling Earth Mother leaving a trail of lotus blossoms in her path.

“Ok, Ma. I admit it. I fucked up. I'm sorry. Tell Madeline I'm sorry. Are you smoking?” he asks, incredulous, hearing a suspicious sounding inhalation on the other end of the line.

“Don't be ridiculous. Of course not,” she insists, as if the idea were utterly preposterous even though it was perfectly obvious she was in the midst of exhaling a chest full of tar and nicotine. “Sorry's not good enough anymore, Charlie.”

“Ok. I understand. Why are you trying to make me feel like crap? What do you want me to do?”

“Try being a little more considerate. That would be a good place to start.”

“It's been a really hard day, Ma. You know what I had to do this morning? Research fox piss! This job really sucks sometimes.”

“Stop complaining. You'd think you'd just finished the twelve labors of Hercules the way you're carrying on. Everything's always come too easy for you. Not everything is always going to go your way.”

“I gotta go, Ma.”

“Your father is really looking forward to coming down there next month. You promised he could sit in the studio. Don't you disappoint him!”

“It's already taken care of.”

Well, it may as well be. Sal's not going to give him a hard time since he's practically forcing Charlie to be his college-bound son's summer play date.

“No, it isn't. You know I know when you're lying. Why do you even still try?”

“I'll take care of it, I promise. Now I really got to go. I love you,” he says, picking up the call waiting.

“Hey, honey,” the voice on the line purrs when he answers. Billy's lovey-dovey tone puts Charlie on high alert. There's only one reason he's calling at noon on a Thursday afternoon.

“Sorry baby. I miss you so much. But if I don't have this fucking memo on the partner's desk by eight o'clock Monday morning I can kiss any chance of getting an offer goodbye.”

Bullshit. Charlie's tempted to ask Billy if he'll be pulling an all-nighter at the Fire Island Pines law library, but decides to let it pass.

“I bought the airline tickets to Vancouver this morning,” Billy says, extending a peace offering. “Start counting the days until August when we'll be breathing the sweet pine-scented air of the Pacific Northwest.”

Ten days of enforced solitude trekking in the wilderness of British Columbia could help repair the cracks and fissures of their strained relationship. Not that Charlie's intending to put much effort in attempting to salvage it. They'll be going their separate ways when Billy graduates from Penn Law in the spring. Charlie's made it clear he can't be persuaded to put his own ambitions on hold to follow a boyfriend first to Washington, where Billy's accepted a clerkship on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and eventually to Manhattan when Billy becomes an associate at a venerable Wall Street law firm. They'll play the long-distance relationship charade for a few months until it peters out, that is if they're able to make it as a couple until next May. It's become impossible to ignore they're a mismatched pair, with barely any interests in common, and the sex has become perfunctory and infrequent.

“You're not saying anything. You're pissed off. I know it.”

“Why don't I come up Friday afternoon and spend the weekend?”

Charlie has no intention of going to New York. He'd paid a premium for tickets to see the British band Temple at the Troc and he loathes the idea of spending Saturday night dancing shirtless in a dark gay dance club surrounded by deluded middle-aged men inappropriately attired in wife beaters and tapered jeans. But he wants Billy to twist in the wind over the unexpected monkey wrench Charlie has just thrown into his weekend escapades.

“Sure, sure. That would be great,” Billy says, choking on his words. “I won't be able to spend much time with you, and the guy I'm sharing the sublet with invited his girlfriend to come down from Boston. There's only one bathroom and I know how you freak out about germs.”

“Hey man, I'm driving into a dead zone. I'll call you back later.”