The coaster is tattooed with a logo I understand better when it is upside down. Fingering it with the digit not wrapped around the cuts of my glass being something more fashionable than it is, I turn it right side up like a fast food kid's meal puzzle. The coaster makes no more sense than it did before, but I can at least assure myself that every angle has been exhausted. Conversation with old friends is special in the way conversation with a dog you loosed because you could not feed it and it, months later, showed up with nothing, but pressed stars into your eyes like sequins and rhinestones into a jean jacket you thought you out grew and were well enough in your present mind to put aside can be special. Several more rotations lead me to believe the bus girl is mentally skewering me with my unused happy hour silverware. I remind myself to tip at the normal rate, because half off applies to the prep work and the line cooks and not the service. The service always comes at full price.
"I don't have all day. I am not getting drunk with you." Laurence is not usually this antsy. I do not blame him. The first time we went out and had drinks he ended his night drying out in Varstown well into Sunday morning and the last time we went out he ended his night with a woman who probably had designs on eating him, had he not managed to duck out while she slept off more entrees and appetizers than the entirety of the North Pots first team could have eaten combined. "Whatever you have got planned, I want you to know that I am not all in from the get, so lay it out." I am not used to him beingforward. Who could be. He has no chin and his eyebrows are as blonde as his skin. The only way to tell what he is feeling is to read his mouth and even that is an after thought of a pink brush stroke. You would have to have fairy wings sprouting from your back to pay that much attention to a man's bridge work.
"I know you don't and won't. Don't worry about it. Drinks are on me."
"Don't give me that service, Danny. I got your message. I already know the drinks are on you. Do I look like I've got my special occasion whites on?" Larry flipped his wrist like a twinky hailing a cab in the rain, trying not to get his outstretched hand wet and suffer through another manicure. "This isn't a treat. This is horse shit, and I'm standing in it," for my sake? I would hope so. Not that I value Larry in particular, but when someone who has been at your wing for as long as a sorry piece of human being as Larry has subjected himself, you feel certain obligations. I want the news to go over well, as well as questionable news can, but more importantly I want him to know that he is not in a corner void of representation. "Are you going to spill it, or am I going to have to order something on my own."
Larry was not unaware of who made the sparks in what was left of the dumpster fire of our getting on. I always had to call him to get him out of his flat. The sort of thing that animated us was a matter of fact and circumstance. Larry had people to look after. Not a wife and child, but people he had to keep up with. People that did not sleep until 10 A.M. People that went to bed at reasonable hours. People that had families of their own and places to be on Saturdays that did not include the Hedgerow. People that gave him shit if he did not show up when he said he was going to. People that made dinner reservations and thought garden parties with paper lamps were a romp. People that did not know Pembrow. "You're going to have to order something," I laughed with a half stroke afflicted heart, and prayed he did not notice. I was not ready to show my hand and still tried to convince myself that a showing would not simply level my conscience, but bring him something more valuable than anything I could have given him that I held back over our years.
Larry raised his hand and flagged with certainty. The sort of certainty that told the wait staff an order was ready to be made with brevity, accuracy, and a little rushed humor and the same kind of service would be rewarded generously. As he raised his arm his black suited sleeve fell, revealing a plain white shirt and a lavish gold watch band. "Doing well for yourself these days?" He ignored me, but I continued, "that's a nice piece you got there. Arston's?" His hand cut its circles short. "The cuffs," his blue eyes met mine, his smile thin and not angry, easing toward the neighborhood of friendly with the effort of a gaggle of midgets pushing a mid 90's American road yacht uphill to an ice cream social they were already six hours late to.
"Yeah. I didn't think you, of all people-"
"Would know that?"
"Yeah," the waiter came and Larry pointed out the most expensive appetizer he could find and went down his laundry list of specifics before allowing the waiter to continue on his way. He rubbed his shaved head briefly, part counting time, part checking the Rolodex leaves of his memory with agitated fingers to make sure he was not falling into a trap. "How did you know that?" His question was genuine. I couldn't blame him for asking. The last time he came over to my flat I did have a used, empty, full of found wood, oil drum ready to go to keep me warm. Our time apart was that long.
"I get around," his belief that I was a complete slacker was not entirely accurate. Ingenuity runs by many names. In the end there is only so much food past its prime and soup kitchen fare you can digest before your body stands up and asks you what the hell exactly it is you think you are getting away with. And besides, the word "complete" carries with it a finality I never took to. Any person who thinks himself a friend to any one besides strangers and, perhaps, civilization, mankind from the highest to the lowest, the sorts of people who put change in homeless men and women's cups because they are friends to everyone involved in the struggle to make up and down of mother Earth, is kidding himself. I am a friend in the truest sense. A friend not complete without an exact human being, a person I can specifically call a friend in return, to dote on and needle at least as often. So a slacker? He had me there. I was in the shuffle for promotions more than once at the mail room over the years. Complete? He was off by a mile. "You're not the only one I know in money these days."
The waiter retired to the bang of pots and pans that came across like whispers in the empty Hedgerow pub and luncheon. "So what's the give? You haven't called me out for an early night in months," Larry broke his train for several seconds to swill his lager, "why am I giving you the time of day right now." The glass came back to his coaster, hiding the puzzle I kept fingering on my own. My glass was empty and waiting for the waiter to make a follow up. I pulled a pack of squares from my back pocket, flattened by my carelessness, but still serviceable.
The pack lay flat on the table like a tin of sardines not yet ready for to do their mash dance to the mulch of tooth and tongue. On the other hand, I was not hungry enough to attempt them either, so we were even. "There is something I needed to talk to you about, that I've been putting off for too long," I began, fingers tapping out a beat I could not place outright, but enthusiastic to fill the space nonetheless. The drumming ran longer than I expected. The words were in the back of my mouth and already packaged for shipment, but it was much easier to think over the plethora of lines I could have fed him that would set better at the table than the ones I had in mind when I phoned him. I pressed. "How's Deb?" I was the one who introduced him to his current fiance. The introduction was a thing of flawless orchestration that I am still proud of. To be the agent in a twining so tight is to be the manager of a football club of superstars with egos big enough to stab each other for the spotlight and to have the presence of mind to realize what element was the one missing catalyst that could make it all gel. Sleeping with her helped lay the ground work. I knew I was not what she was looking for, but half the battle in knowing who you are is knowing who you are not and that was exactly what she showed me back then. "You two working out alright?"
"Yes, we are," Larry gave a glance over his shoulder, but from where I sat I already knew the waiter was still chatting with the cashier, the food nowhere near complete. "I already told you that the last time we met," he reached out to the brass cage around the unlit candle on the table. His finger nails were badly chewed.
"Indeed."
"Just checking up?"
"Just checking up."
"You're not getting back in," Larry leaned forward, his voice low enough to slide into the range of things we usually spoke about that no one else should be privileged to. "So do not try to slide that under my skin. I know you that well. Give me some credit," he winked before sitting back. I nettled him before about our shag. Only twice. The first time was golden. The second time it still caught him off guard. Now it went without saying that Deborah was sure I was the embodiment of sin itself. Not that Larry was religious or stalwart in most things. She hated me, purely. Our brief endeavor went down in more flames than a Rally car off Moroccan cliff faces, hitting several trees on the way down, the navigator killed on impact, the driver burned to death where it came to rest. "What gives?" I could not see myself, but if I had a mirror I knew my face was a poor one for a gambler. I began to lay my cards. Partly because I already had a half dozen bottles before Larry showed up to the Hedgerow late, as I figured he would. Partly because I was never one to hold back among the people I counted as friends.
"'98 was a gas wasn't it," I started.
"I'm surprised your memory can travel backward that far," he laughed. Larry had the laugh of a man who had to have his pants tailored for a gut larger than the largest offerings off the uptown shelves. One of the things Deborah said to me was that I laughed like a poorly fed, zoo kept, cat who should have died years ago, but for the saving grace of the public's morbid curiosity. "'98 was a pretty shit time of it." What she meant to say was that my laughing at her disappointment with her nursing exam scores was absolutely justified after sitting through no less than six dinners where she asked me no less than twelve times if I knew what it was like to comfort the terminally ill. Larry rested his arms against his chest, crossed. There was no ring on his finger. "Not much laughing as I can recall. For you or me," he took another sip of his glass, longer than the first.
"There were some good things though. Some good turns," the waitress, who began serving me an hour before, swept by again with a full glass to replace my empty one. An orange painted machine arm could not have placed the glass any more square on my wet coaster. She did not bother to ask if I was ready to peck at something with my silver still wrapped in its sleeping bag. "After the court settled?"
"I was glad for that. You know that."
"It was a long shot. I was more than glad for it," I smiled though my face felt cool as tide pool stone. Larry blinked. His face showed no hint of belief in my words. I was set to testify then, but did not.
"Come off it, Danny," he drank again, the anger beginning to simmer beneath his cheeks requiring more fluid than a sip could extinguish. The glass emptied. The corners of his mouth turned up like someone took a pair of needle nose pliers, gripped them, and twisted. "You left me out there alone"
"Your parents were there."
"Alone," his eyes were patient, but his internal mechanism was not. He glanced at his watch before turning half toward the kitchen. The bang of cookware was more subdued, suggesting in lulls that wagers should be made on how soon plates would begin rolling off the assembly line toward our table. Between us there were no takers, myself preoccupied and Larry not being a betting man. The wait staff leaned casually on the take out counter and bar. A half empty highball glass of red wine stood near the cash register. I could not decide which one of them was the shift boozer. I could feel Larry trying to peel apart my face and see the reason why he was at the Hedgerow after work instead of on his horse home to tell Deb about how everyone in the office is a backward cunt and he is the only one worth the paper his checks are printed on. "I'm not going to forget that."
1998 was not all bad. It was the year Pembrow went in. The year after he got out of juvenile detention for the break in at Alworthies ten bedroom palazzo. We were both there with him. The place was damn near abandoned. We thought she was dead for years and joked about going in and that summer we did. There was nothing much else to do. I wanted to see what was in there that required a fence taller than two of us standing on shoulder to get over. We snatched a painter's ladder and still had to jump from the topmost rung to get our hands to wear the upper cross bar met the base of the spikes. We were not going to take anything and even if we did there was no way to get it back over that fence. There was no way for us to get ourselves back over that fence either, but we did not think things through then the way we do, the way I try to and Larry does, now. Pembrow always carried a knife with him then. We each had a thing to define us to the other in our gung ho trio. That was his thing.
That year was the year I finally caught out with Penny, long after things settled and the stars were bright at night as stars just and not twinkling like the departed camera flashes outside the courthouse and Larry's home whenever I got away from my parents long enough to run the blocks to his place and see if he was up for an outing. That was the year Larry stole his father's car and we rolled around the creases where the streetlights were far between and I brought it back in the morning to save him the wrath of his father, already broken from the long investigation into Pembrow's stabbing retribution for taking the full brunt of the break in. Some things, though, are unforgettable. "I know," my mouth was dry and my smile weak as I tamped out a smoke from the soft pack. Fishing my pockets, I realized I left my lighter at the bar. Larry produced a silver flip top and offered the flame. "Thanks," I breathed, happy to see him fiddle with his cuff links and happier not to be the subject of his gaze.
"I can't believe I nicked my dad's car," he glanced up and then fiddled some more with a chuckle. "You remember that?"
"No," I lied and let him recount it, the waiter bringing his plate while he laughed and gestured and I laughed with him. "That was pretty ridiculous. We actually did that," I half shouted, slapping the table harder than I intended.
"We actually did that," he nodded. "I still remember phoning you a week later for ball and you couldn't play worth a shit with the tanning you got."
"Yeah, how long was I clipped? Was it two weeks?" I remembered it like yesterday. The longest month of my life was that month. I could sneak out when my parents went to work, but being so tightly bound to home, having to check my watch every other minute to make sure I had time to run home and pretend like I was there the entire day and not out cutting up was torture. I never much liked keeping to a schedule.
"It was almost two months before they let you go to school on your own again," his laughter died down between bites. "I thought it was pretty harsh," he swiped a napkin at the corner of his mouth.
"Crime and punishment, aye?" The words sounded enough like a toast to send my hand to my glass, raise it, and tip it in a hat salute before I could stop myself. Larry did not join me. "Pembrow got what he had coming," the words were out of my mouth as quickly. Awkward and stilted, but from my heart instead of my head. That was the problem. My heart was about ready to leap out of my mouth and spill it all too soon.
"No he didn't," Larry's fork came down to his plate and rested. I finished my glass in the silence.
"Another for you," the waitress asked, pointing a finger at his glass. She had a nose for me and would crank as many beverages out of me as I was willing to purchase in lieu of actual food. I began to answer, out of habit, before Larry waved her off, his eyes still on me.
"Yes, thank you," I held my empty glass aloft for her and resumed my grip on another full one, the coaster still defying understanding, but staying clear of the beaded glass I kept within arms reach. I waited for her to disappear before continuing. The lights turned down several shades, the happy hour drawing into the early evening preparations for the night crush. "I agree with you. All the way."
"I bet you do."
"I would have been next."
"Lucky for you they caught up with him, or lucky for you he found me first?" I did not answer. The question was rhetorical, I was sober enough to understand, but I had nothing humorous to point up in Larry's words the way he would leave openings. That was his thing. He kept conversations going. He was not the third man in our group, he was the first. Without him there was nothing common to any of us. I lifted my glass again, "are we done here? As much as I enjoy watching you get fucked up, I have places to be." I laid down the last of my cards. There was no more time for calculating. The old Larry was not a man of ultimatums, but I had no doubt that he would walk out if I did not give him a reason to hear me out.
"Pembrow is gotten out," I did not drop my eyes as much as they fell like poorly aged neck waddle at a Spanish skin beach. Larry's face lost a shade of its usual, well fed, rose. "He's been out for two months. He's looking for you." My eyes darted upward for the waiter and down again, having met the waiter's eyes on the way up, gazing at us, the only patrons on a Tuesday afternoon. "He was looking for you and he came to the mailroom and found me and asked about you." I fingered the coaster with one hand and the foot of my glass with the other. "His face hasn't changed at all. Not a speck of difference. I didn't know what to say so I told him the truth." Larry's cheek flinched, his eyes narrowing. "I told him I have no idea where you are. And I don't." Both of his hands rested on the table near the candle. The waitress reached in to light it.
"How is everything," she asked with a well rehearsed and well delivered grin. Her cheeks were pulled back in the same way Pembrow pulled off. His smile was feminine enough to disarm, but his teeth meshed in the jagged way reptile teeth matched, spine to gap, with a force of mechanical perfection one finds when watching rolls of razors shred paper into perfectly neat slips of refuse. A mechanical perfection so well geared to turning order into charming chaos it was a wonder to see it work. I blinked. Was it Pembrow towering over me from the corner of my eye? His face was the same, but where Larry and I hit our ceiling, all he did was grow taller, larger, thick necked in his time away. The snap of the fireplace lighter's switch brought me back, but it was Larry who answered.
"Fine, yes. Thank you." In stiff movements, Larry wiped his fingers and his brow. "Are we done here," the words were cooler than before and the color was gone from his face as the waitress departed.
"I'm sorry, Larry. I've been trying to tell you, but you don't return my calls. Haven't returned a damn one until now," I fished my cigarette from the tray and took the candle beneath my nose to relight it before clattering it back to the table top. "He's been out for almost two months now and coming to the mailroom every week, and I know where you live," the words came out wrong, "I know you live somewhere around here," my hand rushed around in a circle, chasing its tail, "and I don't want you caught unaware." His time was not entirely up, but good behavior can work wonders and he never lacked charisma. Or will. At the Alworthies mansion he defended us from the security guard when we all thought we were at the edge of being shot outright that night, but we were kids and he was the oldest. The knife was his thing, not mine, not Larry's. What were we supposed to say to the police? What was I supposed to say after he got out, after he found our new school and Larry's car and waited for us, but found only him that day? Was I supposed to tell them about the phone calls or the message I deleted detailing what he said would be the best night of my life because it would be the last? What difference would it have made when all the evidence, all the tangibles, were written across Larry's wrecked body, inside and out. I could have added nothing then.
"Goodbye, Danny." My cigarette bit its filter and my throat.
"What are we going to do," I stood up with him and reached for the elbow of his sleeve as he turned in our booth. His arm hitched and upended his glass as he yanked it away to regain his balance.
"Goodbye, Danny," he repeated as he straightened his suit jacket and did not look back. I did not sit down again. I watched him go. Watched him pull his cellular from his jacket pocket and dial as he strode. Deb would be on the other end. They would talk about their days. He would say he stopped off for a bite to see no one. I followed his steps and made a right turn toward the bar. The bell above the door rang. The night crowd would be thickening like old blood soon enough.
"Another of the same," the waiter serving me asked from behind the bar. The only difference between a waiter and a bartender is an apron and notepad.
"Sure," my black and white striped lighter still sat where I left it. Pulling it into my fist with fingers that tried to tap out a beat, but instead sent staccato Morse code distress babble into the air, I realized the box was still at the table. I tried to forget about it.
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