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I hung my coat on the rack inside the door, saw that Susie was coaxing her regulars into a limbo competition as the band tuned up.
Susie called to me, “Lind-say, get out of your wet shoes. You can do this, girl.”
“No way, Suz.” I laughed. “Don’t forget, I’ve seen this before.” I showed myself into the back room. I buttonholed Lorraine and ordered a Corona.
Yuki waved to me from the back booth. Then Cindy looked up and grinned. I slid onto the banquette next to my best friend, Claire. It had been a while since we’d been out together as a group. Way too long.
When my beer came, Cindy proposed a toast to me for the takedown of Garry Tenning.
I laughed off the toast, saying, “I was extremely motivated, Cindy. I didn’t want a roommate, and you were going to have to move in with me permanently if we didn’t catch that bastard.” Yuki and Claire hadn’t heard the details, so I filled them in.
“He’s ‘writing’ this book called The Accounting,” I told them. “It’s subtitled A Statistical Compendium of the Twentieth Century.”
“Come on! He’s writing about everything that happened in the last hundred years?” Yuki asked.
“Yeah, if you can call page after page of statistics ‘writing’! Like, how much milk and grain were produced in each state in each year, how many kids went through grade school, the number of accidents involving kitchen appliances —”
“Jeez, you can Google that stuff,” Yuki said.
“But Garry Tenning thinks The Accounting is his calling,” I said as Lorraine dropped off beer and menus. “His paycheck came from being a night watchman at a construction site. Gave him ‘time to think big thoughts,’ he told us.”
“How’d he even hear all those people and their noises in his closed-off little room?” asked Claire.
“Sound travels through the plumbing and the vents,” Cindy said. “Comes out in weird places. Like, I can hear people singing through my bathroom air duct. Who are they? Where do they live? I don’t know.”
“I’m wondering if he doesn’t have hyperacusis,” said Claire.
“Come again?” I said.
“It’s when the auditory processing center of the brain has a problem with noise perception,” Claire told us over the racket in the back room and the clanking of dishware from the kitchen. “Sounds that others can barely hear are intolerable to the person who has hyperacusis.”
“To what effect?” I asked.
“It would make the person feel isolated. You stir all that up with explosive-anger disorder and sociopathology, well, you get Garry Tenning.”
“The Phantom of the Blakely Arms,” Cindy said. “Just tell me there’s no chance he’s going to get out on bail.”
“None,” I said. “He confessed. We have the murder weapon. He’s in and he’s done.”
“Well, if he really has this auditory disorder, Garry Tenning is going to go absolutely bug-nuts in prison,” Yuki said as Lorraine brought our dinners.
“Hear! Hear!” said Cindy, pointing a
t her ears.
We dug in, swapped stories and worries, Claire telling us that her workload had doubled and that “We’re having a farewell pour for Dr. G. tonight. He got a job offer he couldn’t refuse. Somewhere in Ohio.”
We toasted Dr. Germaniuk, and then Claire asked Yuki how she was feeling these days.
“I’m feeling a little bipolar,” Yuki said, laughing. “Some days I think Fred-a-lito-lindo is going to convince the jury he’s a legitimate psycho. The next morning I wake up absolutely sure I’m going to beat Mickey Sherman’s pants off.”
We got into a good-natured competition to name Claire’s unborn baby, Cindy calling out, “Margarita, if she’s a girl,” and winning the next round for free.
Way too soon, dinner had been reduced to bones, coffee had been served, and hungry would-be diners were backed up in the doorway.
We tossed money at the check on the table and dared one another to rush into the rain. I was last out the door.
I drove toward Potrero Hill, absorbed by the rhythm of the wiper blades and the halos around oncoming headlights, finding that the vacuum of silence in the wake of the tumultuous day and the camaraderie with my friends was bringing me back down.
