“From what I’ve read, it was an accident. The dad fell asleep after driving the boy around. The kid was sick, and I guess he had trouble sleeping? I didn’t ask her about it.”
Jimmy squinted up at the sky as if looking for his next words. “So.”
Pree waited.
“When are you going to see her again?”
“Dunno. I texted her. I guess if I see her—”
“If?” Jimmy’s knee jostled the small table so that his pen rolled off the edge and hit the ground. He didn’t bend to pick it up. “You met the woman who gave you life. You have to be interested in that story. It’s part of who you are.” Pree knew. She wondered if he focused on his wife and two kids like this, and if they loved it when he did.
Pree rolled her pen in her fingers. “It’s what I always wanted, to know who she was. I knew who she was even before I moved here, part of why I came. And now that I’ve met her—what more am I really going to get from her? I mean, I have two moms already. Do I really need another?”
Jimmy arched a questioning eyebrow.
Pree laughed. “Lesbian moms. Double the fun, double the kale.”
“Gotcha. So, do you think your dad is the same as the guy who did the carbon monoxide thing?”
“No. She was, like, sixteen when she had me. And that was just barely. No one stays with the person they’re with when they’re that age.”
“True. How long have you been with . . . what’s his name? Finn?”
“Flynn.”
“Yeah. Him.”
Pree peeled a sticker from its backing and then concentrated on putting it back, exactly where it had come from. “Not that long.” Three years, since junior year.
Jimmy smiled. “How about that.” His voice was darker gray than a storm cloud.
“How about that,” she repeated.
“You two serious?”
This was where she should tell him, Yes. We’re serious. I love my boyfriend. Instead she said, “Not really.”
“Not exclusive.”
She and Flynn were monogamous. It was something they’d expressed clearly to each other. “No.”
The smile spread slowly over Jimmy’s face. He was the kind of handsome that belonged on a TV show about motorcycles. “I like hearing that. You’ve got something in you, you know that? Something special.” He paused. “It seems like still waters run deep with you. There’s something you’re not admitting. You can tell me anything, you know. I’m a good secret keeper.”
What, did he know or something? The look on Jimmy’s face was both kind and frightening in its intensity. All of this could be such a bad idea. He was a very bad idea.
Shit. She had to tell Flynn about the pregnancy. This cemented it. Flynn the Safe. Flynn the Good.
“So,” she said. “Your slap looks great.”
It did. He’d drawn ADOG just right, with enough boldness and thick/thin variation that it looked real.
“You sure you’re okay?” Jimmy asked.
Under the table she removed her sticker’s backing quickly—she was good at that—and pressed it to the underside. “I’m okay. I guess. Whatever. I will be.”
If Flynn were a bad boy, she reasoned, he wouldn’t be her Flynn, the one she needed to talk to. About the pregnancy, anyway.
“I know you will be. I have absolutely no doubt that you can handle whatever ends up in your path. You look good, by the way. Out here. Outside the office.” Jimmy leaned back and grinned at her again. Whatever he was doing right now, he’d done before. She pictured herself for one second, her legs around his waist, pressed up against a dirty alley wall, getting fucked so hard she forgot about everything else.
Pree pushed the sticker harder into the underside of the table as she smiled back at him. You had to mark your spot, to sign it. Like you were praying, a wish that only God knew was there.
Chapter Nine
Monday, May 12, 2014
5 p.m.
“You got every cone? You sure?” Mario scowled at Nolan and jabbed his thick finger toward the stretch of road they’d been working on for the last two hours. As far as Nolan could tell, the look was permanently frozen on his face.
“Of course.” Nolan nodded and sent a half-laugh disguised as a cough to Rafe.
“Every single one?”
“Yep,” Rafe said. “Why you so worried? It’s going to come out of your salary if we miss one?” He was good at teasing Mario. Their supervisor never got it, never understood that the guys were laughing at him. He was so ineffective that dealing with him was the only thing that made Nolan miss being in charge.
“It should come out of your salary. If I had my way, I’d charge you a hundred and twenty-five dollars for every damn cone you pendejos leave out on the road to get smashed.”
Everyone laughed, which made Mario spit sideways and stalk back to his truck.
“It’s not worth it, being a supe,” said Rafe. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”
“You’d be bad at it anyway,” said Nolan.
“No way.” Rafe pushed his long black hair out of his eyes.
“You see everything in black and white. Supes need to see in shades of gray, or they suck. Like Mario.” It was what Nolan had liked at the very beginning about Rafe—that good-versus-bad simplicity that Rafe believed in so deeply.
“Bullshit,” said Rafe, but he shrugged as if in agreement.
“Call it like I see it,” said Nolan as he glanced at his cell phone to get the time. Almost done for the day. He was exhausted, clear through to the bone. Just the way he liked it.
Walking back to the truck, he let the guys’ talk wash over him. He settled in the passenger seat, drinking the last cold dregs of this morning’s coffee from the thermos he’d left on the floorboards. No way did he or Rafe smell as fresh as they had that morning, but it was good to feel this tired. It was the beginning of the spring pothole blitz, his first, since he’d been on a little less than a year. All the guys said it was the worst part of the year, but Nolan liked the pace. Moving from street to street, filling in the worst of the holes, it was steady, almost soothing. Oakland’s roads held up for thirty years, but they could afford to replace them only every eighty-five, so some roads had more filled holes and ruts than asphalt anymore. Job security, that’s what they called it.
Rafe banged the door shut and said, “Oh, man.” He started the truck and headed back to the yard.
“I agree,” said Nolan. “Hey, I was too sleepy and didn’t ask this morning. How’s Rita? Did you hear anything?”
Rafe smiled widely, the deep dimple in his cheek caked with dirt and sweat. “I didn’t know this morning. We were still waiting. But when I got that call at four o’clock, it was her. Best news ever. Just a fatty tumor. Benign.”
The tension that had been coiled at the base of Nolan’s neck started to uncurl. “Good,” he said. “That’s really good.”
His friend’s face was more relaxed than Nolan had seen it in weeks. “It’s like God comes through, you know? You pray and pray and then, if you pray hard enough, you get your miracle.”
“Not always.” Nolan wanted to take back the automatic words as soon as he said them. Rafe was the closest thing he had to family now. He spent Wednesday nights and most of each Sunday at Rafe’s. Rita cooked meals specifically for him, arroz con pollo and a heavy cinnamon cake that fixed his sugar craving for weeks on end. Often Nolan played Candy Land with Rafe’s daughters until their bedtime, and then he watched sitcoms with Rafe and Rita until the wall clock chimed midnight. Letting Rafe have this—his belief that his prayers had cured his wife—was something a friend would do.
“You don’t think?” Rafe shifted so that they were an inch farther apart on the bench seat. “God gives, and God takes away, right? Rita’s prayers are good. And mine were desperate, so they were extra strong.” Rafe was Catholic, sternly, proudly so.
“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean that.” God wasn’t always the only one who took away.
“Huh.” R
afe glanced at him. “Sounded like you did.”
“My prayers didn’t work out, that’s all. Old scab. I’m sorry.”
Nolan watched as Rafe shook it off. He was good at that—quick to forgive, ready with a laugh. Nolan envied him the ease with which he swam through life. Rafe did the breaststroke while Nolan tried to approximate a clumsy dog paddle. But then again, Rafe had family while Nolan had two missing-in-action parents. They’d been decent folks all his life. Jim and Poppy, the banker and the gardener. They’d flown over from Hawaii for Robin’s birth, and he and Kate had gone out with the baby once, putting Robin’s ecstatically kicking legs into the warm blue ocean. He knew his parents had come out for the funeral, too, but he hadn’t seen them then. They hadn’t visited him in jail, saying it would make it too hard on him. Neither Jim nor Poppy had come to one day of the trial. His mother had sent a card that said they both believed in his innocence and that he should come stay with them after he was free. Adequate parents. They were kind when he was young, kissing him good night and reading him the occasional bedtime book. They hadn’t broken him, after all, and he loved them. He’d never been the link that kept them together. He hadn’t been enough.
Rafe palmed the wheel to turn into the yard. “You’re coming with us tonight, right?”
“Yeah. Of course.” Nolan didn’t really want to go to Murphy’s, but it was important. “I’ll meet you at the bar.” He jumped out and unlocked his old beater Honda—he didn’t want to have to get one of the guys’ wives to drive him back later. He’d stay sober; no way in hell he was drinking and driving. It was only by the skin of his teeth that he’d gotten this job in the first place. It wasn’t easy for an ex-felon to get a job doing anything, let alone civil service. But during his last year of incarceration, his cellmate David had pulled some state roadwork because his brother was a mucky-muck up high in Caltrans, and he’d gotten Nolan in on it, too.
He’d loved it. Even with radio shackles strapped on in case he decided to make a break for it, a guard with a gun watching his every move, a long pickup stick in his hand for grabbing plastic bags out from under bushes that scratched him until he bled, he’d loved it. It wasn’t an office. There was no hum of fluorescent lighting overhead, no soft shush-shushes as copies spat out endless reams of unnecessary documents. No polite laughter when the other partners walked by, no pretentious lunches, no golden handshakes, no false promises.
In comparison, the road was true. The noise came from truck traffic, blasting their ears as they worked in underpasses. The sun burned his skin, even under the hard hat, even with the sunblock they provided. He felt half deaf when he finally took the noise-canceling earplugs out and found himself shouting politely at the grocery store after work out of habit.
And the people on the road crew were his friends. Outside, they were equal, instead of the fucked-up games that went on behind the bars. Nolan hadn’t adjusted well to prison—what criminal with a white-collar past did? Inside, they hated him for so many reasons. One, he’d killed a kid. Didn’t matter it was his own, didn’t matter Robin was in pain, it just mattered it was a child. Two, he had no idea how to play the game.
In high school, Nolan had been tough. He knew how to fight, and he’d liked to do it—scrapping with boys who could barely throw a punch, always winning, liking the salty, acrid taste of a small amount of blood in his mouth. In the law firm, he’d occasionally bragged about his quick-tempered, fast-fisted youth.
In prison, he’d realized he didn’t know a single fucking thing about fighting. The first beating he took left him with two broken ribs and a punctured lung. That was for taking the last white roll. How could he have known you left one on the tray in case someone more important came through behind you? He’d tried fighting harder the second time, but the guy who jumped him for cutting in line—he hadn’t—was at least seventy pounds of muscle heavier than Nolan. The man’s fists were mallets of solid steel. Nolan hadn’t been able to see out of his left eye for three weeks, and for a while he wasn’t sure he’d get vision back in it at all. He saw double for six months.
Humbling. It had been beyond humbling. To know you couldn’t take care of anything, not even—especially—yourself.
But on the prison road crew, he’d made friends. Casual ones, but they were guys that later he could sit with in the yard. That had made things almost bearable, to be able to shoot the shit with someone you weren’t scared of. Occasional laughter.
When he’d gotten out of prison the year before—released early for good behavior, they said, but he knew it was because the state was easing up on euthanasia cases—he’d called his ex-cellmate David, who told him where to go, what phrases to say. He checked the felony box on the application, wrote his explanation, ninety percent convinced he’d never be hired. When he went in for his interview for Oakland Public Works, he made the mistake of saying, “I want to be a flagman.” He wanted to be the guy who looked into every car, watching families pass, fathers with fingers lifted in thanks from the steering wheel.
The man who interviewed him, a big guy with perma-red cheeks and sparse white hair, had roared. “It never gets old, man. I’m telling you, it never gets old. Every single guy comes in here wants to be a flagman. You know how you get to be a flagman? You work the roads. Some days you get to hold the flag. Some days you don’t. Just like life. My crew is the best. I’d take a bullet for ’em, and sometimes I almost have. It’s not an easy job—it’s dirty and hot and humiliating. You can only work it if you really, really want it.” He’d looked down at Nolan’s paperwork, and Nolan knew, even from where he sat, that the felony box was the part standing out in neon, flashing, pulsing at the man. “You’re an ex-lawyer ex-con. How do I know you’re not just in it to spring a lawsuit on me? I got enough of those.”
“I want the job. Sir.” The words were simple. But his heart was in them, and the man heard it.
“You’ll get word next week.”
He hadn’t had to wait—the job was offered to him that afternoon by telephone. He took it, gulping embarrassingly and gratefully. He hadn’t been as excited when he’d made partner.
And he’d been fucking terrible at it at first. Hands that he’d thought were hard from the work he’d done on the prison crew were soft in comparison to his coworker’s iron palms. As the rookie, he’d had to do the shit work—all of it. And literally, a lot of the time, the work involved shit of some sort—animal shit, Porta-Potty emergencies. He’d kept his shoulders back, and when Seymour Cliff came at him for using the wrong shovel, he’d backed down, hands up, knowing that Seymour would not only beat the hell out of him, but he’d also lose his job. He was the one still on probation, not Seymour.
Maybe, come to think of it, maybe it was one of the best things he’d learned in prison. Posturing was important, sure. You strutted your stuff like a peacock even when you felt dull as dishwasher sludge. Marching through the yard, head so high you brushed the clouds even though you felt lower than dirt. But even more important, you had to learn when to fall. You had to learn when to roll over and show your belly. Once a seriously disturbed inmate had held a piece of broken razor to Nolan’s neck in line at the commissary. The only reason Nolan lived was that he had tilted his head so that the guy could get a better swipe at his artery if he needed to. He’d offered quick, easy access to his own death, and in exchange, the guy had palmed the razor and walked away as if nothing had happened. All Nolan had had to do was show his belly like a dog.
It was the same on the paid road crew.
He did the grunt work. He played the rookie until a younger newbie came along. He never complained. If someone swiped his jacket, he just bought another one. What else was he supposed to spend money on? If a guy took his Coke right out of his hands, guzzling it while the others laughed, he brought two the next day, just in case.
The other men had watched, their eyes almost as careful as those in prison.
And one by one, they offered him the smallest things: a single sideways laugh.
The extra cup of Gatorade. The first time someone had teasingly knocked off his hard hat, he almost cried with relief.
And now, a year in, no longer the rookie they could make go out in the rain while they sat in the truck, Nolan loved it. He’d spent nine years at the firm, and in all that time he hadn’t known his coworkers’ spouses’ names. But one year on the road, and he knew Tim’s wife’s middle name, because he’d put it on the card that they’d all signed. Nolan had been the second to hear that Shante couldn’t get it up anymore, and the first to hear that Viagra was a wonder drug sent from God. He knew when Rafe’s first niece was due, and that it was a girl, and that that was because in his family they only made girls. Nolan and Rafe planned to build the baby a crib, even though neither of them were woodworkers. They’d bought the plans for it the week before.
The men—and they were all men on Nolan’s crew—were his family now. He’d never had a second of this feeling at the firm. And if Stephen Schmidt, founding partner of Schmidt Cade and Whipple, parked his Mercedes on the right-hand shoulder and came over and offered him his job back, with full benefits and the guarantee that all was forgotten, Nolan would laugh in his face. He really would. He wasn’t going anywhere. The only person he didn’t get along with was Mario, and no one got along with Mario. That man had risen to the level of complete fucking incompetence, and as long as he could yell at someone during the day, he was happy. Nolan didn’t mind if it was him Mario yelled at. Didn’t change his paycheck. On the outside, people thought yelling made it a bad day. He knew better.
Of course, Nolan wasn’t happy. How could he be? But for long hours of hard work, he forgot. And wasn’t that, really, what happiness was? The absence of pain?
Murphy’s bar wasn’t far—a half mile at most from the yard. The drink-up itself was in honor of a somber occasion: the one-year anniversary of the day Louie Pacheco had been killed. It was a tradition on the first anniversary to honor a fallen coworker with drinking until they were all tequila-blind. It was what they did. Never forget. Most of the guys’ wives had plans to come pick them up late that night—divvying up the driving and coordinating in the morning to get the cars back. That was nice of them, Nolan thought. Considerate, especially when you thought of what shape the guys would be in when they were poured into their backseats. For a second, as he locked the car door with his key—the remote was broken—he missed Kate so viscerally he could almost feel her next to him in the cold parking lot. In another life, she would have picked him up like the other wives were going to do. She would have pressed that impulsive kiss of hers against his lips, against his neck, before asking how it had gone. How are the guys? How are you, my love? He’d been her love and, god, she’d been his. She’d been everything. All.
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