by Stan Parish
I laid the shotgun gingerly in the depression my body had left in the sheets. I could have cried at the relief. I didn’t know why Rob was here; I didn’t care.
“Give it to me,” Rob said, for the second time, sticking out his hand.
Casey stared at him.
“Your iron. Give it to me now.”
Casey drew the gun again and handed it over by the barrel. Rob emptied the cylinder into his hand and jammed the gun and the six rounds into the two front pockets of his parka. He was wearing sweatpants and black alligator loafers. It looked like he had thrown on whatever had been closest to his bed.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Rob asked Casey as I walked into the room.
“He’s visiting,” Casey said. “What do you think he’s doing here? Why are you here?”
“Pack,” Rob said.
“What?”
“Pack a bag. You leave tonight.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You want him to hear this?” Rob asked, jamming his thumb at me.
“I can leave,” I said.
“Fuck that, nobody leaves. Rob, what the fuck?”
“You got about three hours before the cops show up here with a warrant. I just heard from a guy down at the precinct who was supposed to be sitting on your house all night before a raid at 6:00 a.m. They’ve been on you for months. The only reason you’re not locked up already is you’re not as stupid as you look. They don’t want you around here anymore, and I can’t have you bringing heat on me like this. You’re gone right after they come in here and toss your place. You understand?”
“Why now?” Casey asked, after a silence. “Who talked?”
“Start packing.”
“Rob, why is this happening? I pay those motherfuckers every month, just like you showed me. Whose idea was this? Who set me up?”
“Don’t ask me that again.”
“Then fucking tell me.”
Rob took a blur of a step to close the distance between them, caught Casey by the wrist, and wrenched his arm behind his back. Casey doubled over and tried to throw him, but Rob had already snaked his right arm around Casey’s neck from behind, forming a triangle-shaped vice to stop the blood flow. He straightened my friend’s spine with a vicious pull that looked like it was meant to take his head off at the neck. They were the same height, and Rob was up on his toes as he gripped his left bicep with his right hand, which Casey was trying in vain to pull away from his throat. I had seen bouncers use this choke when they lost control of a room. Rob began to squeeze. Casey had five seconds of consciousness, maybe less.
“Some spic down in Wildwood set you up,” Rob hissed through his teeth. “Your mother set you up. I set you up. It doesn’t make a fucking bit of difference who it was. You’re gonna do exactly like I tell you. I come over here in the middle of the goddamn night, and this is what I get from you? You should be down on your fucking knees.”
The room and everything in it seemed to have hit that shimmering state just before combustion. Casey was slipping away.
“Rob,” I said. “Jesus Christ.”
Rob held on long enough to let me know he was wasn’t taking orders. Casey dropped to one hand and both knees, gasping, holding his throat.
“I’m sorry,” Rob said. “I lost my temper. Listen, we don’t have a ton of time here, so I gotta ask some questions. Casey, sit. Sit down on the couch. Tom, get him some water. Casey, are you listening?”
Casey nodded.
“You got another piece here? Besides that duck gun?”
Casey shook his head.
“I know that’s a lie.”
“Then what’d you ask me for?”
“Don’t fuck with me, kid. Not now. Where is it?”
“In the safe.”
“Which is where?”
“Spare room. Under the bed, under the rug. The floor comes up along the wall.”
“How much weight are we talking?”
“Half a key.”
“What else is here that I should know about?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Think hard. What about the sandwich shop?”
“It’s clean.”
“I know you don’t have anything at my restaurant. Because if you and that piece of shit Miguel are keeping one baggie there, I’ll turn you in myself.”
Casey looked up at him, and there was pain all over his face.
“OK,” Rob said. “How much cash is here?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“You either give it to me or you give it to them. Up to you. What’s here?”
“There’s $20,000 in the coffee cans in the freezer.”
“The safe?”
“There’s $290,000 in the safe.”
I stopped in the doorway with a full glass in my hand and stared—$290,000, twenty feet away, underneath a bed I had been sleeping on.
“The rest is in the Caymans?”
Casey nodded.
I thought: The rest?
“Listen,” Rob said. “Maurice is downstairs. We’re gonna look the place over, get it spic and span. I need you to pop the safe, and you need to be here, in bed, in your jammies, when they show up. I promised there was no way it would look like you saw this coming down the pike.”
“What happens to my money?”
“You mean how can you ever repay me for saving your life? That’s nice of you to ask, so here’s what you’re gonna do for me: find another way to make a living. That money goes into my safe, in my home, and this”—Rob took a business card from his wallet, not his own, some chiropractor down in Margate, and wrote on it in pencil—“is the code to the safe in my home, where that money will be. If you don’t fuck up again, this whole thing looks like their mistake. But listen to me, Casey, because I swear to Christ I mean this: If you ever sell anything to anybody after tonight, and I hear about it—and I will hear about it—I’ll burn that money. Every dime. That’s my insurance policy, because I gave my word on this. Do you understand me? You don’t hand someone a roach, you don’t give an aspirin to your friend here. Look at me and tell me that you understand.”
“I understand.”
“Because I run a business in this community, and I can never, never be associated with this.”
“I know.”
“Stick that money in the islands, or I can make it look like back pay at the restaurant, consulting fees, whatever. You’ll pay some taxes, but that might be a good thing for you to start doing at this point. But you’ll never make another cent the way you made that.”
Casey nodded.
“I want you gone for a while after this gets sorted out. Take a trip, take a vacation someplace. Cool your heels.”
Casey turned to me.
“Can I stay with you at school?”
“Where’s school?” Rob asked.
“Scotland,” I said. “St. Andrews University.”
“Scotland. Perfect. Play golf, fuck sheep, do whatever they do over there. Let this blow over.”
“Wait,” I said, “how long are you thinking? I go to school there and they gave me shit about entering the country. You can’t just up and move to the UK.”
“What,” Casey said, “you don’t want me hanging around you over there?”
They were both looking at me now. Casey was half right—I didn’t want him to see how I was living and what I was doing to myself.
“That has nothing to do with it,” I said. “Fuck, why would you say that?”
“So what’s the problem?” Rob asked.
“Nothing. I’ll figure it out.”
“Good,” Rob said, looking at his watch, a gold Rolex Daytona. “Get out of here for an hour, get something to eat. You don’t need to watch us digging through your shit. Tomorrow we can talk abou
t the long term.”
Casey stood up and sat back down.
“Talk to me,” Rob said. “This is not the worst thing that can happen, Casey. Not by a long shot. Are you listening? This could have been a situation where my hands were tied. This could have been a situation where there was nothing I could do to help you. You know how many times I got fucked up by these guys? Be thankful that it’s only this.”
“Be thankful? What am I supposed to do?”
“You let me worry about that. But call Melissa. That call needs to be from you.”
Casey pinched the bridge of his nose, and closed his eyes.
“I’ll call her,” he said. “I’ll call her when we leave.”
“Leave now. Tom, take your friend to breakfast. Get him fed.”
Rob grabbed Casey by the shoulders as he stood up from the couch.
“You’re a man, Casey,” Rob said. “Take this like a man. I’m proud of you. You’ve got friends. Don’t forget that. Be back here in an hour.”
I spotted Rob’s Mercedes as we took the stairs down to the frozen street. He had parked on a side street behind a pair of trash cans, invisible to the cruisers patrolling the boulevard. Maurice, a manager at the Sailfish, was sitting shotgun with the engine running and the headlights off. A cell phone lit up on the dashboard, and Maurice climbed out and started toward the house with the phone still ringing in his hand. Casey, wearing nothing but a thin gray sweatshirt, went left to avoid him. I hugged myself against the wind.
The only place open at that hour was The Chegg—shorthand for the Chicken and the Egg—an all-night turn-and-burn that specializes in atomic hot wings. It was four blocks from Casey’s and lit up like a barn fire while everything around it was dark, locked up, closed for the season. At the hostess stand, a server with “Stacy” tattooed on his skinny neck was peering over the shoulder of a spray-tanned woman with bangs that looked deep-fried. They were laughing at something on her phone, both of them high as kites. The only other people inside were a man wearing headphones at a back table and another server running a vacuum around him.
“You want a table, hon?” the hostess asked as Casey walked past her. “Is he OK?” she mouthed to me.
I nodded, and she scanned the street outside, looking for whatever had shaken him, making sure it wasn’t coming in behind us. I followed Casey to a booth made of unfinished wood, where he sat facing the door. The hostess reappeared with menus and ice water. Casey drained his glass without coming up for air.
“You should eat something,” I said.
“I’m not gonna eat.”
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll order something.”
I flipped through the menu, absorbing nothing, imagining the next few hours of Casey’s life. He would have to get undressed, kill the lights and lie in bed, waiting to hear boots on the stairs. Across the table, he looked old, drawn, exhausted. All the precautions he had taken, and for what?
“Juice?” I said. “Coffee?”
“Go,” he said.
“Go where?”
“Wherever. Just don’t be here in thirty seconds. I have to call Melissa.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Leave.”
“You can come stay in Princeton if you don’t want to be down here by yourself.”
Casey knocked back a mouthful of ice and started chewing through the weak flat cubes. I stood up and wondered what would it take to launch into a confession right there in the dining room, in front of the hostess and the servers and the man in headphones. Casey looked up at me and I saw that he was barely in control, that it would kill him to have me there if he broke. I was terrified that something would go wrong when the cops showed up, that he would fight, that this would be last time I laid eyes on my only friend. The hostess thanked me for coming in as I walked out the door.
I had just started my car when I felt something stick in my throat. I choked twice before I realized I was crying. I let it come then, dropped my chin to my chest with both hands on the wheel, gulping down the cold stale air. Up close, the pattern pressed into the steering wheel looked like the surface of another planet, full of dry rivulets and valleys and flat planes where my hands had worn the rubber smooth. I thought back to something I had seen in the AA literature my mother’s sous chef left lying around when he was in recovery—a bolded line that encouraged the reader to admit that their life had become unmanageable. I had wondered what that might feel like. When my breathing had returned to normal, I sang a few verses of Neil Young’s “Out on the Weekend” to get the kinks out of my voice. Once I was certain that I wouldn’t choke up again, I called my mother.
“What’s wrong?” she said, hushing her voice. “What’s the matter? Where are you?”
“I’m in Beach Haven. Casey’s in trouble.”
My mother took a long breath.
“Let me guess,” she said. “Is he in jail?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet. I’m coming home. I just wanted to let you know.”
“Tom? I need to talk to you.”
“I’m driving. Can we talk tomorrow?”
“No, you’ll blow me off tomorrow, and I’m awake now.”
I heard her stand up and cross her bedroom. I wondered if someone was there with her.
“I keep thinking about this thing you said to me one night when I was running out the door, when you were a baby. I had Anna from the diner coming over to watch you. You were three, three and a half, running around in these overalls that you made me put you in every day. I told you that Anna was going to take care of you while mommy went out for a little while, and you looked up at me with this frown on your chubby little face, and you said: ‘I take care of me.’ And I know how important that is to you, sweetheart, but you’re not doing a very good job right now. And I’m not talking about the thing at Lawrenceville. It’s not hard for me to imagine why you were doing that. I’m disappointed, but I’m more upset with myself than I am with you. It’s what you saw growing up, which is my fault. I’m not wringing my hands and asking why, you know? Does that make sense?”
I heard her close and lock the bathroom door, and I was sure now that someone else was there. A guest from the party, maybe, someone I had laid eyes on at the house, someone I had served. I started my car.
“What’s worrying me now, because I’m not understanding it, I guess, is how you’re picking the people in your life. It’s like you can’t relate to anyone unless they’re running from something. What are you looking for, sweetheart? It’s not something I need you to tell me right now. I just want you to think about it. Is something upsetting you?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Is there anything you want to ask me? Anything about your dad?”
“Not really,” I said, realizing, as I said it, that it wasn’t true.
“OK. Are you on 539?”
“Almost.”
“Watch out for deer,” she said. “And cops.”
• • •
She was up and dressed when I walked into the kitchen at 5:30 a.m., grinding fresh black pepper over a skillet of scrambled eggs with parsley and fresh pecorino. If someone had been there with her, he was gone now. She wiped her hands clean as I came through the door, opened her arms, and told me to come here. We ate together while the sun rose in another time zone and turned our sky blue with a slow leak of light.
I woke up to the buzz of my UK phone vibrating in the pile of loose change on my bedside table. I had been back in St. Andrews for five days, and it had been exactly that long since I’d spoken to anyone besides the deliverymen from Balaka who brought me an aluminum tub of Chicken Tikka Masala once a day. I had shut myself in to do four months of reading in the week before exams. It was dark outside when I woke up on the floor, but by then it was only light for a few hours each day. My bed was covered in textbooks and notebooks, reams of paper soaked in li
ters of ink, and I was devouring everything from post-Keynesian economics to the poetry of Robert Burns while Clare’s Adderall suppressed my appetite. I checked my watch as I grabbed blindly for my phone. 4:25 p.m.
“Hello?”
It was Casey. He had sent me an e-mail to confirm that he was coming over, but this was the first time I had heard his voice since we’d parted ways on LBI.
“Hey, Mike called me this morning and asked if he could come over with me. But if you can’t take two guests, or if you can’t take Mike, just say so. No hard feelings.”
“Of course Mike can come,” I said. Mike was a scratch golfer; I had been expecting this call. “Ask him if he wants to play the Old Course.”
“I’m sure he does. He was on this crazy run in Atlantic City, playing like thirty-six hours at a stretch, eating speed all day, just killing it at the tables. He wants to cool off and get healthy again. Needs a vacation worse than anyone I’ve seen. What’s the weather like?”
“All over the place. The rain comes out of nowhere, but it doesn’t snow or anything. It gets dark right after lunch right now. It’s that far north.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No, it’s pitch black outside,” I said, walking to the window. “We’re only five hours ahead.”
“You don’t get depressed?”
“You do.”
“You don’t sound so hot.”
“I just woke up. I’ve got exams until you get here and then we’ve got a week off.”
“Well, keep your head out of the oven until then. I’m stoked to come over. It’s a big trip for me. Thanks for doing this.”
“Get here safe,” I said.
There was a hum in my ears when I hung up, but the Adderall had a way of making words on a page feel like company, which made this isolation almost bearable. I pressed one hot cheek against the windowpane. A young couple was standing under a streetlight in the parking lot, the girl walking slow circles around the boy. He had a thin ponytail and wore combat boots that looked like buckets at the bottom of his skinny legs. She was heavy, pretty. They looked like they spent a lot of time on multiplayer video games and science fiction. As they started back toward the hall together, and I realized they must live in the building, that we were practically neighbors, possibly classmates, and yet I had never laid eyes on them before. There were so many people here I would never know.