Best Friends Forever

by Jennifer Weiner

  If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, he thought, and ordered a Cheese-burger in Paradise and a Red Stripe. One beer became two, two turned into three, and then the guy next to Jordan at the bar bought everyone a round of Coronas and paid the bartender fifty bucks to put “Fins” on repeat, which necessitated more beer, plus a shot of tequila to dull the din of a hundred sunburned middle-aged Parrotheads waving their hands in the air and singing.

  “You okay?” asked his ponytailed waitress as she dropped the check in front of him. She had a steel bar through the top of her ear, through her pinna, which was a useful Scrabble word. Jordan and Patti had once been Scrabble buffs. They’d had a travel set and taken it everywhere they might have been stuck with time to kill. They’d played on the beach on that last trip to the Bahamas and, before that, in the doctor’s waiting room, and in the hospital, where Patti lay, pale and wan, an IV needle in the back of her hand, ultrasound gel on her belly, trying not to let him see her cry.

  “Can I ask you a question?” He fumbled in his pocket with the waitress staring at him, and wondered how many times she’d been propositioned by vacationing Midwesterners who were old enough to be, if not her father, then her much older brother. “Have you seen either of these two ladies?”

  She gave the pictures a cursory glance, then shook her head. “Did you lose someone?” she asked.

  Oh yes, he thought.

  “Hey, good luck,” said the waitress. He left her a big tip and dragged himself back out into the sticky, thumping night. A group of three guys in khaki shorts and baseball caps were standing underneath a streetlamp, consulting a map. Jordan tapped the smallest one on the shoulder and flashed the photograph. “Have you guys seen…” He swallowed, struggling to remember the rest of the sentence, and the small guy patted his shoulder.

  “Dude,” he said not unkindly. “You are wrecked.”

  Jordan licked his lips. “What are you drinking?” Each of the boys had a plastic pail—the things were too enormous to be called cups—full of something pale-brown and eye-wateringly potent.

  “Voodoo Bucket,” said one of the guys. He lifted his pail in a toast as his friends whooped, and used his elbow to point toward an open-air bar on the opposite corner. The place had walls papered with autographed dollar bills. A tanned man wearing nothing but a Speedo and a cowboy hat sat alone at the bar, his elbows propped on the polished wood. Somewhere nearby, a steel drum band was playing “Oye Como Va.” Jordan crossed the street and caught the bartender’s eye.

  “One Voodoo Bucket, please.” A Voodoo Bucket, Jordan thought as he carefully carried his beverage back to his car and then up to his room, was festive. It was the kind of drink you’d enjoy on the deck of a cruise ship, or in a lounge chair overlooking the pool. It tasted like rum and fruit juice. Possibly grain alcohol. Maybe antifreeze. Jordan wasn’t sure. Up in his room, stripped to his boxer shorts, he sat as close to the rattling air conditioner as he could, sipped his drink, and dialed the station to check in. Things were fine, Holly assured him. They were following up. Tracking down leads. Watching the phones. Everything was completely under control.

  Jordan made all the right noises, offered all the right praise and words of encouragement, saying “nice work” and “good job” and “I’ll check in tomorrow morning,” and cut Holly off before her voice could soften as she asked how he was doing. And then, as the hands of the clock slipped past midnight, he did the thing he’d resisted doing for the more than twenty-four hours since he’d heard the news: he dialed Patti’s number, her cell phone number, which was still the same as it had been in the days when they’d lived together.

  She answered on the third ring. “Jordan?”

  Hang up, he told himself. Hang up right now. Instead, he asked, “Remember when we used to play Scrabble?”

  From two thousand miles away, he heard his ex-wife sigh. “Oh, Jordan.”

  “Remember? In the hospital that last time? You spelled ‘fromage,’ and I challenged you because it was a foreign word, and then they came to give you that shot…”

  “Epidural,” said Patti. She sounded unhappy. He’d made her unhappy. As usual.

  “I was right, you know,” he said. “You can’t use French.” He squeezed his eyes shut. His face was wet. Sweat, he figured, or maybe he’d spilled some voodoo. “Guess where I am.”

  “Wherever you are, I hope someone else has your car keys,” said Patti.

  “Key West,” he said, pronouncing each word carefully. “I am in Key West conducting an investigation.” Shit. He’d been doing all right until “investigation,” but that hadn’t come out so well.

  “Jordan,” said Patti. “Are you seeing someone?”

  “A woman?” he asked stupidly. “No, Patti. I don’t want that.” Only you, he thought. Only my wife.

  “Not a woman, a therapist,” said Patti.

  “Oh. Yes,” he lied.

  “No, you’re not,” Patti said. Before he could try to insist that he was, she continued. “Do you know what I think you should do? Get yourself some Tylenol, and a big bottle of water, and take the Tylenol, and drink the water, and go to sleep.”

  “I can’t,” he said querulously. “I’m investigating, remember?”

  “Your investigation can wait until morning,” she said.

  “Maybe I’ll move down here,” he said, and gulped a mouthful of his drink. “It’s very warm.” He set his bucket down and wiped his face with the washcloth he’d brought from the bathroom. “There’s palm trees. Jimmy Buffett’s got a restaurant.”

  “That sounds nice,” she said. She was humoring him. It was the same tone he imagined she used with her remedial reading students. That’s excellent work! Good job sounding that out!

  “Come here,” he said. “There’s an airport. You fly to Miami, then connect. Or I’ll drive back up and meet you. Just bring a bathing suit. I can buy you whatever you need.”

  “Oh, Jordan,” she said. She made a noise into the telephone, and he thought he’d made her cry.

  “I miss you,” he said, and that was true, but it wasn’t the biggest part of the truth, which was that he missed being a husband, having a home to come back to at the end of the day, having a wife across the table, next to him on an airplane or in a car; a wife who knew his whole history: how he’d gotten stung by a jellyfish in the Bahamas and tried to pee on himself to make the stinging stop, how he hated beets and little airplanes and the smell of gasoline; a wife who would sing “I Loves You Porgy” in the original politically incorrect dialect when she was drunk.

  “Water,” said Patti, from her warm bed in Chicago. Undoubtedly, Rob Fine, DDS, was at her side, maybe curled up and snoring, or maybe glaring at her, squinting and pissed, knowing it was only a handful of hours before the alarm clock rang, sending them out of their beds. “Tylenol.”

  “I heard you had a baby.” For a moment, there was silence, and he thought that she wasn’t going to answer, or that maybe she’d hung up.

  Patti’s voice, when she finally started talking, was proud and shy and embarrassed. “Rob and I adopted a little girl from Guatemala. We brought her home three weeks ago. Her name’s Lily, for my grandmother.”

  Lily. Lily had been their girl’s name. He rubbed his palm over his wet cheek, thinking he wouldn’t be able to force his voice around the lump in his throat. “I’m sorry about ‘fromage,’” he said. “I should have let you have the points.” But he was talking to a dial tone, which eventually became an unpleasant beeping, which turned into a mechanical voice. If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, press zero for an operator.

  I need help, Jordan thought. He gulped from his bucket, then lay on the bed and closed his eyes and pictured Patti, Patti in heels and a tight black skirt he’d liked, walking briskly down a hallway, towing a wheeled suitcase behind her, maybe holding a little girl’s hand; Patti steering a rental car through the streets that led toward the ocean, driving along with a cup of coffee in the cup holder, trying
to find him.

  After forty-five minutes of lying there, he decided that if he couldn’t sleep, he might as well work. He picked up his car keys and his Voodoo Bucket, and went out to continue the hunt.

  FORTY-SIX

  “Dan?” It was morning, Monday morning, and Chip Mason was shaking his shoulder. Dan groaned, squinting in the light. Merry had dropped him off at Chip’s on Sunday morning. He’d hurried to the door, almost running, desperate for Chip to answer and shoving his mouth close to his friend’s ear when he did. “Don’t you go all Holy Joe on me,” he’d hissed. “This woman is batshit insane, and you’ve got to let me in.” Startled, Chip had looked past him, at Merry’s minivan, then opened the door.

  “You got any beer?” Dan had asked, making his way to the kitchen and hoping that Chip wouldn’t ask what had happened and how he’d come to be driving around in Holy Merry Armbruster’s minivan.

  “It’s nine in the morning,” Chip had said.

  “Don’t be an old woman.” Dan opened the refrigerator, where of course there was no beer. There was milk, and apple juice (apple juice? What kind of grown man drank that?), but nothing stronger than Sprite.

  “What happened?” Chip asked as Dan lifted the green plastic bottle to his mouth and commenced chugging. And there must have been something in his voice, a familiar tone somewhere between skepticism and indulgence—oh, Danny, what did you do now?—that reminded Dan, bruisingly, of his mother. That was what it had been, he realized, feeling stunned and sick, back at Merry’s… the way she’d looked at him, not in anger but in disappointment. In sorrow. His mother had been the one who would pick him up when he’d get suspended, the one who’d drive him home when he got benched from the football games, and each time she’d ask him that question, then sigh and say, You’ll be the death of me.

  He put the soda down on the table. When he and his friends had gotten in trouble for painting shit on Addie Downs’s driveway (Downs Syndrome, they’d called her, a name he’d thought of himself that never failed to crack him up), he’d given his mother the bare minimum of information. They’d painted some graffiti, just a prank, no big deal, the freakin’ vice principal had it in for him, he’d said. He’d reminded her that Addie had been the one to accuse him—falsely, he took pains to point out—of messing with Valerie Adler. He didn’t say that Addie had it coming, but he let the implication hang in the air and linger. Only that time, his mother hadn’t sighed, hadn’t indulged him. She’d sat him down at the kitchen table—he was a foot taller than she was by that point, a hundred pounds heavier, but she could still scare him—and had looked at him steadily before dropping her eyes and starting to cry.

  “What?” he’d asked. “What, Ma?”

  She’d wiped her face and looked at him, eyes blazing, looking… It took him a minute to sort out, and when he did, he had felt that same sick, stunned feeling that came over him in Chip’s kitchen. His mother had looked ashamed. Do you know what it’s like, she asked him, to raise a son who’s no good? Do you have any idea how it feels?

  He’d started to protest, to launch into his litany of excuses—no big deal, it was just paint, it would wash right off—only, midway through his recitation, she’d gotten to her feet and turned her back on him. I’m done with you, she’d said. I’m done trying. And even though she’d cooked his meals and washed his clothes, had dropped him off for the first day of college and made Thanksgivings and Christmases for years, what she’d said that day was true. In some way that was undefinable but undeniable, apparent mostly in the absences and omissions, in the things she didn’t ask him about (girlfriends, future plans), she’d given up on her only son. He had disappointed her. He had broken her heart.

  Slowly, he sank down in a chair at Chip’s kitchen table. “What happened?” his old friend asked again. Dan shook his head. Then he’d lowered it into his hands and sat there with his eyes shut until Chip told him that services were starting soon, and Dan surprised both of them by saying, “I’ll come.”

  That had been his first time inside a church since he’d left his parents’ house. When Chip, looking all official up in front of the altar, had said “Let us pray,” Dan had dropped his head so fast he heard his neck crack. He’d spent the afternoon on his knees again, still not talking, not answering when Chip asked what was on his mind or if he wanted to talk about it. Instead of thinking, he washed Chip’s floors with a brush and bucket he’d found underneath the sink, then worked over the bathroom grout with an old toothbrush. Even with all of the cleaning, even with the praying and the fasting (which was mostly inadvertent, since it turned out he was so hungover he couldn’t actually keep solid food down), he couldn’t get Valerie Adler out of his mind, Valerie’s face in the country club parking lot, twisting as she told him he’d ruined her life, and a younger Valerie, her face blurred with tears, her hands pushing at his shoulders, saying, Please. Saying No. Valerie’s pleas getting mixed up with his mother’s voice, quietly asking if he knew what it was like to raise a son that was no good.

  Chip had made them dinner—spaghetti with jarred sauce, a salad from a bag. Dan couldn’t eat. “What’s wrong?” his friend asked for the third time… and that time he’d told.

  “She said she’d tell her father,” he’d groaned to Chip by the end of it. “And you know what I said? I said, ‘You don’t even have a father.’” He’d squeezed his eyes shut, hating the stupid teenager he’d been, drunk on cheap beer, taking what he wanted, breaking his mother’s heart. Chip had listened while Dan told the story, bringing it up like a hunk of rotten meat, talking until his throat was hoarse and Chip spread a sheet on the couch and told him to get some rest.

  Now it was morning. Dan got up from the couch, still dressed in the clothes Merry had given him, the too-short pants, the shirt that smelled like someone had died inside of it, probably while smoking an entire carton of unfiltered cigarettes. He jammed his feet into the tight rubber boots and looked at the doorway, where Chip was waiting.

  “Can you take me somewhere?”

  He waited for Chip’s nod, then went to the kitchen, where he found a glass and drank two glasses of warm, mineral-tasting tap water. It occurred to him that this might very well be the last thing he’d drink, the last thing he’d taste as a free man, and the thought made him gag and sent him reeling over to the kitchen table. He collapsed into a chair. Chip watched him for a moment, then crossed the kitchen and gave Dan’s shoulders a squeeze. Dan got to his feet.

  “Where are we going?” Chip asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” said Dan. He got to his feet, bracing himself, getting ready for what he knew was coming. “Get in the car and I’ll tell you.”

  Chip nodded, picked up his keys, and led Dan out the door.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Don’t drive, Patti had said. But Jordan didn’t have to listen to Patti anymore. “Bad gums,” she’d said, and he’d believed her. Dentist-fucking Patti and her new little girl. Jordan unlocked the rental car’s doors, got behind the wheel, and started driving, up one street and down the other. Key West wasn’t that big. He bet he could hit every house in the place by sunrise.

  He made his way to a neighborhood called the East End, a series of narrow streets, each one lined with trim wooden cottages set on postage-stamp lawns. He drove slowly, seeing whose lights were on, looking at the license plates of the cars in the driveways. After an hour or so of this, he slowed and then stopped in front of an ancient green station wagon with Illinois plates that he’d last seen speeding away from Crescent Drive.

  He sat back behind the wheel and stared past the car at the dark windows of the little white cottage, snug behind a yard full of red-and-pink blossoms and the spiky leaves of palm trees. Gotcha, he thought, and waited for the feeling of triumph to flare in his veins. Nothing happened. He just felt lonely, and sad, and sick.

  Hair of the dog, he decided, remembering Judy Nadeau grinning at him drunkenly, asking if he wanted to fool around, and took a sip from the Voodoo Bucket, which he’d br
ought with him and belted into the passenger seat. Patti’s voice said Her name is Lily in his head. It was just after three in the morning. Let them sleep, he decided. He’d confirm that Val and Addie were in there as soon as they walked out the door, which they would have to do eventually. He’d corner them, talk to them, convince them to confess. He would take them to the Key West police station where they’d turn themselves in. Then he would call Sasha and tell her that he’d solved the crime.

  Jordan leaned his head against the window, and his eyes must have slipped shut. When he opened them, the sun was rising, turning the sky an unnatural flamingo pink. He could hear the wind moving through the trees and, faintly, the sound of the ocean… and the sound of someone tapping on the window. He straightened, bracing himself for a pissed-off neighbor or, worse, a fellow officer of the law, asking him his business, telling him to move along. Instead—he blinked, wiping at his watery eye—he saw the Nighty-Night Lady. No snail puppet, but he recognized her anyhow. She’d gotten a tan, and with the pink sky behind her, she was even more beautiful in person than she was on TV.

  “Jordan?” she said. She looked puzzled… maybe even afraid. “Jordan Novick?”

  He blinked again, and the Nighty-Night Lady’s features resolved themselves into Addie Downs’s face. He got out of the car, stiff-legged and achy, waiting for that hit of adrenaline to come roaring through his veins.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “What are you doing here?” he countered.

  She looked sideways at a gumbo-limbo tree. “Vacation.” Her voice was so quiet he could barely hear her. “I’m on vacation.”

  He cleared his throat, hoping his own voice sounded authoritative, no-nonsense, but even as the oxygen reached his brain, he realized that he was much, much drunker than he’d planned on being.

  He spoke slowly, keeping each word distinct, each syllable precise. “Where is Dan Swansea?”