“You’re not in good shape.” She looked over his stringy hair and bloodshot eyes with maternal concern. “Promise me you’ll talk to someone?”
“Sure.”
Gretchen squeezed his shoulder and left him. The bathroom was swampy by the time she came out and he stumbled to the shower, sucking down the last of his Big Gulp, still unable to shake off his night terror. He gripped the sink and glared at his reflection in the mirrored cabinet, his face so like his father’s that he could squint and see it.
“Goddamn you, Dad!” he shouted, startling himself. “You just had to get up on that fucking horse, prove what a man you were!” He kicked at the shower enclosure and the folding door fell off its track with a crash.
“What the hell—” Gretchen was there instantly, like she’d been waiting outside, knocking to be let in. He opened the door. Gretchen’s face showed both fear and the annoyance that was increasingly common when she saw him. “You’re scaring me, Anthony. You can’t just . . . lose control like that.”
“It’s okay. I’ll fix it.”
She peered by him and relaxed a little. “Oh, I’ve knocked the door off like that. You can pop it back onto the track. Who were you yelling at?”
“Kind of yelling at myself, I guess.”
She caught him with side-eye on her way back to the kitchen. “Well, don’t. The neighbors complain about everything. They want to get me evicted so their daughter can move in.”
“Sorry.” He’d done nothing since moving in but find new things to apologize to Gretchen for. He was starting to look forward to seeing Hilary again in spite of all the rough water under the bridge, just for the new beginning of it and the possibility of pleasing her. When things had been good between them, it was like learning how to fly. He’d like to be a person someone wanted to know.
The door slammed behind Gretchen, and Anthony remembered it was Wednesday already. The camp was moving under its own momentum and he no longer had a good reason to put off Rick Burlington’s insistent invitations to lunch.
Anthony was off-balance and yawning when just after noon he emerged from the chilled sanctuary of the theater to cringe at the overbright sun. He cast his gaze down and followed the concrete seam along the middle of the sidewalk. Even in broad daylight he couldn’t shake the unwelcome phantasm Brittany’s story had called into existence. The same cold nausea inched up his neck every time he recalled the dreamtime sensation of wanting to cry out but having no voice. The terror of falling.
He opened the bar door with alacrity. Just a beer, he told himself. The counselors need never know. He’d only heard Rick described, but there was no mistaking him surrounded by the lunchtime crowd at Jackson’s Steak House. In a well-ironed white western shirt and jeans, he looked like an airbrushed politician compared to the regulars, businessmen in off-the-rack suits and women waving unmistakable full carats with every casual hand gesture. Displaying net worth was a careful dance in Billings. Too much and you were pretentious in a place that prided itself on lack of pretense, too little and people might not hear your money talking. But talk it did, Anthony thought, as he noticed a few wealthy real estate developers who’d turned him down cold when he asked for money for the camp. They pretended not to see him.
Rick recognized Anthony, too, the moment he stepped in, and hopped off his stool to hurry over. “Hello there, Anthony. Pleasure to finally meet you.” His enveloping grip bordered on sweaty and he pulled Anthony in, shaking hard, shoulder patting, a dance of dominance when all Anthony wanted was a drink in a shaded spot. Anthony extracted his hand as soon as he could and wiped it on the back of his leg where Rick couldn’t see.
“Yeah. Likewise. Listen, I only have forty-five minutes until I have to be back.”
Rick led him away from the bar toward the empty formal restaurant used only for the evening seating. “I thought you might rather talk in private. I arranged for a table over here.” He ushered Anthony to a hidden back corner where the light was mercifully low and a table was set with a white tablecloth, cloth napkins, bread basket, and matching dirty martinis.
Anthony hated olive juice but he wasn’t about to turn down good vodka. “Good idea,” he said. “I’d rather not be the talk of Hayden before I even get back there.”
“Just what I was thinking. I hope you don’t mind—you said you had a short break so I ordered appetizers and had them put steaks on for us. I ordered them rare, but if you want it more cooked, they’ll take it back.”
“No—no, rare’s good, thanks.” Anthony sat and picked up his martini. At least Rick didn’t brutalize a good cut of meat. Chalk one up for him. He took a healthy gulp to drown the cough syrup taste of whoring himself for the camp.
Rick sat beside him, grinned, and raised his glass to clink Anthony’s, as if there were already something to celebrate. Anthony’s shoulders tightened. He was acutely aware, especially sitting, of how large a man Burlington was. He must be all torso, nudging up against Anthony’s personal space with his meaty arm. Anthony pulled his elbows in and focused on getting his drink down. The one couldn’t hurt, on top of a good meal.
A waiter appeared—not one of the college kids who delivered food to the wrong tables but a grown man with practiced hands who arranged calamari and bruschetta between them, poured water, and topped off the glasses from a cocktail shaker before Anthony could refuse. When the waiter was gone, Rick put both big hands on the table where Anthony could examine them. It was pure display, the pink buffed nails and long, tapered fingers that had never done damaging work, flashing an embossed fraternity ring. Dean Fry would have had unflattering words about such a man. Rick had probably heard them and didn’t care. He was proud of those ornamental hands. As long as he had the ranchers’ compliance, their good opinion was optional.
“How is your mother, Anthony? They’ve had me out in L.A. for meetings and I’ve missed seeing her. Such a nice lady.”
“What are you talking to Mom for?” Anthony made his voice casual, but a little tremor ran through his belly at the mention of Sarah. He didn’t like her being part of this, although he should have realized after her words at dinner that Rick was making himself friendly.
“I get to know all the folks out there. Part of the job. Just wondered how she was managing with your father gone.” A little touch, like the point of a blade jabbing in and out, drawing blood.
“Oh, she’s fine. She’s got my uncle helping out.”
“Yes.” Rick’s diction was crisp, no sliding into the local diphthongs for him. He was Denver all the way. Anthony wondered what Rick had done to get assigned to the hinterlands and how he felt about it—or if this might be exactly the kind of coercive assignment he thrived on. Rick’s martini glass looked vulnerable where he was throttling the stem and that intrigued Anthony, the knowledge that Rick’s genial host routine only thinly concealed his frustrations. “Neal and I talk fairly often. He’s concerned about her. I think it’s best for both of them to have him there full-time.”
Anthony’s eyebrows twitched involuntarily. “You talk to Neal a lot?” He’d written that off as Neal riling him up.
“Oh, you know. Guy stuff. Hunting, the Broncos. He keeps an eye out for me in the county.” Rick’s smile was all large teeth. It was like being courted by the wolfish captain of the football team.
Anthony bit into the nearest bruschetta. He wondered what Rick thought was worth knowing and whether Neal was playing him straight. “What’s going on in the county?” he asked.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed—some real prosperity for a change. Money flowing in instead of out. We’re always happy to be able to do something for the community, like the bus for your camp. That’s great PR. I was happy you asked.” Rick lifted his glass for another little toast. Anthony gulped his drink. He felt like a fish drawn up in a net, tighter and tighter, until one day they’d land him on deck and breathing would get difficult. When the drink was nearly gone, he noticed that Rick was barely sipping, watching him over the rim with a predator�
�s unblinking gaze. Anthony put down his glass and reached for the bread basket.
“We’re grateful for that,” he said. “It makes a big difference. Really expands who we can serve.”
“And we want to go on helping. This is a partnership, am I right?”
“Yeah.” Anthony shifted to get farther from Rick without doing anything so obvious as moving his chair. He had the disturbing sensation that he was back onstage and Rick was feeding him lines. It was a form of improv. All he had to do was play along and never say no, but he had a slimy feeling like he might wind up with a time-share.
The waiter was back in a few minutes, rearranging the table to place matching tenderloins in front of them. Anthony watched his martini glass fill up and thought of declining, but he didn’t want to reject Rick’s hospitality. Talk ceased as they ate while the sound system filled in with a soft jazz track, like they were in an elevator or on hold. Anthony’s phone lying on his leg showed a good twenty minutes to go. He cut off a smaller bite of meat and held his elbows out to keep from sweating through his shirt in spite of the air conditioning. Smile and nod, he reminded himself. Let him say his piece and get out.
Rick sat back from his empty plate looking pleased while Anthony was still occupied with chewing. He folded his hands across the beginning of a well-rounded gut.
“I hear you’re thinking on the lease. If I understand right, the trust requires at least two of you three to sign off on any mineral leasing. Are there any questions I could answer?”
The mouthful of melting, tender beef grew suddenly tough in Anthony’s mouth. He worked and worked and finally got it down with the help of another big swallow of seawater vodka.
“I’m curious about the reclamation process,” he said. “I’d like to know what our land will look like after we get it back. And how close the mining would come to the house. Mom likes the quiet out there.”
Rick shifted his dishes to lean in and speak in a confidential tone, one hand so close to Anthony’s plate that Anthony wondered if he might snatch away the rest of the steak if the conversation took the wrong direction.
“Great questions. Exactly what you need to know, and I’m proud to say we have good answers. Harmony complies with all the surface mining laws and even puts up a bond for reclamation. You have a guarantee—not just from us but from the government—that everything will get filled back in, reshaped, reseeded. Nothing to worry about there.”
“Okay.” Anthony had thought the law required the bond, but Rick made it sound like some special thing Harmony did. Was it just Harmony, he wondered, or did all mining companies talk like they ought to get medals for doing the legal bare minimum? Rick’s words tumbled a dozen more questions into Anthony’s mind—On what time line? What about subsidence? What about the creeks and the trees? The aquifer?—but they all sounded hostile and confrontational. He thought of the bus parked beside the theater, waiting to carry kids home. How long would that last if he challenged Rick for more detail? If he flat out said no to the lease? Rick’s thick paw was still right next to the pool of juice and blood at the edge of Anthony’s plate. The sight stilled his appetite and made him thirsty.
The waiter was pouring from the shaker again and Rick’s words kept flowing, faster now. “Your mom’s house we should talk about. I have some good alternatives in mind. It’s not going to be a good place to be once mining starts—too many big vehicles on the roads, lots of dust, and it’s inside where we’d like to place the perimeter of the active mine. What I’d like to do is take her looking around at real estate. We could get her into a much nicer place, buy it for her outright as part of the deal. I think she’ll like what we can offer her.”
Anthony started to cough. He’d swallowed his bite of steak, but something caught in his throat. The waiter had taken his water glass so he reached for what must be his third martini and drained it. “What does Mom think of that?”
Rick rubbed his smooth chin. “Oh, I haven’t talked it over with her yet. I thought you might like to approach her first, so she knows you’re on board. It would be a great thing for the whole family, not having to maintain that old place. That’s the beauty of it, don’t you see? You can buy a whole new ranch and get the old one back when we’re done. Double your land, double your money!” He pulled a stack of stapled paper from a file hidden on the chair beside him and smoothed it out on the tablecloth. A pen appeared as if by sleight of hand.
“How long would that be? Until we get it back?”
Rick tapped the paper. “It’s all in here. The main phase runs about twenty years.”
Twenty years? Sarah could be gone by then. Rick was asking her to give up her home for the rest of her life. The vodka had smoothed Anthony’s throat and warmed his fingers and toes so that it didn’t take great effort to smile and nod. “Yeah. Sure,” he said. “Hey, I’d better be getting back. Thanks for lunch, it was great.” He got one hand on the arm of his chair and the other on the table to ensure a steady rise under the liquefying influence of the martinis. Half his steak lay uneaten.
Rick’s eyes were on him, evaluating Anthony’s mental state. “I’d sure like to have you sign right now, get that out of the way.”
“Yeah,” Anthony said as he sidestepped, clinging to first principles: Smile, nod, get out. Nothing else. “Yeah, I’d better talk to Mom first. Great steak. Thanks a lot.”
“You’ll remember what we talked about?” Rick asked, standing. Anthony smiled in what he hoped was a friendly way as he performed a long, uncoordinated good-bye wave and felt behind him for the doorway arch. He was wary of tripping, but some lizard part of his brain was surfacing warning bubbles through the alcohol not to turn his back on Rick.
“Oh, for sure.” Anthony made a little gun sign with thumb and forefinger and pointed jovially at Rick. He registered for a second that this wasn’t something he’d do sober, but now he was in a hurry to get out of Jackson’s before he said anything else. “See ya!”
Rick was still at their private table, snowy cloth napkin in one hand and the pen in the other, when Anthony took a last glance back. Rick had been smiling a second ago—that homecoming king grin that would have shot all the way to the cheap seats on Broadway—but when Anthony looked again, the smile was gone. For just an instant before he ducked away toward the heat of the patio, Anthony saw something completely different, and was afraid.
Act 2, Scene 1
It was Friday of the following week before Hilary followed Anthony’s approximate directions to a side street near the tracks and an unmarked alley door. He was late getting in that morning. The nightmares were driving him in a pattern of frantic writing and drinking that left him fuzzy on the exact parameters of day and night. He’d had excess words to spill since he was a kid who covered notebooks cover to cover and burned them so no one could find them and mock him. Now it was just him, the paper, the bottle, and one bulb burning until at last the booze overwhelmed his fear of real sleep and what came with it. Most mornings he sprang up with the alarm, but that was getting harder, too.
Hilary had called a few days into her visit all clear-sky enthusiasm, like she was an amnesiac Candide and the other stay in Montana had never happened. Did she even remember the end, Anthony wondered, or had she been that out of it? He’d never say no to seeing her, but the foreboding came with her first words.
“Anthony! I’m here! It’s a whole different planet here when it’s green!” she said. Where someone else might have heard joy, he heard mania. Seconds later he decided that was unfair. She’d gotten help. She had meds. This time was not that time.
“Pretty spectacular, ain’t it?”
“Just amazing. When can I see you? It’s been ages.”
He gave her directions to the theater. “I’m here most waking hours on weekdays. It’s panic mode all the time staying one step ahead of the kids. If you can’t find it, ask anybody.”
Later he recalled that he wasn’t talking to a small-town girl who was comfortable stopping strangers in the stre
et, but Hilary always managed things, charmed people—except when she wasn’t managing at all. Seeing her would tell him the truth. He’d learned her tells the last time around—how her eyes stopped focusing, her hands got shaky, and she licked her lips until they scabbed when she was barely holding on.
She took her time coming to him. He should have known that Mae and Chance would be her priorities. He wasn’t even sure he came in third—that slot probably fell to whatever artistic project she’d thrown herself into. Between camp and the nightmares he’d almost forgotten she was coming when he heard the crisp rap at the alley door.
He met her where the big rehearsal room opened onto a line of restaurant Dumpsters end to end like train cars. Hilary had stepped back several feet and craned her neck to examine graffiti on the brickwork with an expression of keen professional analysis. She was a brown Botticelli, aglow with divine light, rounded and graceful, the sort of apparition who could walk into a party full of flamboyantly dressed artists and command all eyes. The sensation of seeing her was what Anthony felt when he put the daily cigarette to his lips on the walk home from the theater each evening: pure relief.
“You found it!” He opened his arms wider than the door to pull her in and buried his nose in her fragrant black hair. Her scent wasn’t perfume but incense, something she’d no doubt set to burning the moment she arrived in Chance’s house. Sandalwood, patchouli—little boxes with Hindi markings littered the tables and counters when Hilary was in residence. She mixed them with local grasses until the whole place smelled like a brush fire that had burned down a spice store in its path and put ranchers decidedly on edge. Anthony was certain Chance hated it but would make no comment and open windows. The effect both annoyed and inebriated Anthony, but his senses were always overloaded in Hilary’s presence. She carried with her the atmosphere—smell, taste, sound, the immersive experience—of a world he longed to join.
The Weight of an Infinite Sky Page 5