The line goes dead.
I set the phone on the counter. The screen holds his feet on the sand for two seconds and goes dark. I stand in the kitchen. My hand is still flat on the counter where it has been since the phone rang.
He was saying my name. He was drunk in an elevator in a hotel on a road trip and calling for me across however many miles were between his hotel and this apartment. I was standing on this balcony or lying in this bed or making coffee. I was holding the distance between us like a thing I was carrying forboth of us and he was in an elevator asking for me by the name only the locker room uses.
I pick up the glass of water. I drink it. I set it in the rack next to the cup from this morning.
The camera bag is on the counter. I unzip it and take out the camera and turn it on. The last image on the card is from three days ago. The ocean from this railing. Gray water, gray sky, nothing alive in the frame. I press the back button. The image before it is from Aruba. His shoulders, the villa steps, the bougainvillea on the wall. I press it again. His hand on the railing of the restaurant patio, the candlelight on his knuckles.
I turn the camera off.
In Aruba he rated the ceviche lower than last year and he said the acid was sharper. The acid was not sharper. The thing that was different was the guy tasting it, and I noticed it but kept quiet, like I've done for 15 years.
And tonight Marchetti picked up a phone and called a man he has never talked to before because he did not know what else to do.
I go out and stand at the railing. My road trip starts in a couple days. Carolina, then a back-to-back in New York, then DC.
I stand at the railing with my hands on the metal. I am going to do something. The not-knowing from Aruba has changed shape. It is not the same not-knowing. This one has a direction. I do not know when. I do not know what it costs. But I know the direction.
?
Chapter 25: Luca
The text comes at four.
Thompson.
You, me, Hájek, Marchetti. Tacos. Virginia-Highlands. 7. Don't argue.
I don't argue. Arguing requires the broadcaster and the broadcaster has been offline since the storage room. Since the floor and the breaking and the getting up and the driving home and the feeding of the cat. I did not call it anything. Calling it something would make it real and if it is real then the rest of this has to be real too.
The restaurant has a patio with an awning that catches the last of the sun. Chips and salsa arrive before we sit down.
Thompson tries. "Columbus game. Fonty's second goal, the redirect off the far post. You see the angle he took?"
"I saw it," Marchetti says.
I nod.
The silence stretches across the table.
"Hájek, you ever been here?" Thompson says.
"No. I don't know this area."
"Virginia-Highlands. Good food. Good neighborhood. Berger should be rating every restaurant on this block but apparently we're retired from that."
"I'm not retired," I say.
"Then rate the salsa."
"It's fine," I say.
"It's fine. The man with the spreadsheet says fine." Thompson shakes his head. "Hájek, what do you think?"
"It's good salsa."
"At least one of you gave me an adjective." He orders for everyone, probably sensing no one else at the table was capable of making food decisions.
