by Brady Hammes
The bartender approached and tossed a cocktail napkin on the bar. “What are you drinking?”
“Vodka tonic,” she said.
The bartender studied her for a moment. “Weren’t you in here earlier?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened to the other two guys?”
Where were the other guys? Where was everyone, really? She’d somehow isolated herself from the world, from everyone she loved, so that now, when she was finally ready to explain herself, to come clean in every imaginable way, there was no one to talk to but an elderly bartender.
“My brothers,” she said. “They’re at church.”
“But not you?” he asked, running a rag across the bar.
She shook her head.
The bartender laughed softly. “You an atheist or something?”
“No.”
“Agnostic?”
“I don’t know what I am,” Sam said. “Just guilty, I guess.”
The bartender smiled. “You’ve come to the right place.”
GAVIN
GAVIN AWOKE AT DAWN, unable to sleep. He walked to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee, then spiked it with a shot of Bailey’s, a little Christmas morning tradition. Sometime in the night, his mother had placed three stockings beneath the Christmas tree, each filled with candy and a random collection of personal items: lip balm, socks, and a pack of razors even though he hadn’t shaved in two years. He took his coffee and walked to the large window overlooking the city. All was quiet except for a couple taxis parked along the curb and two young men pulling suitcases along the sidewalk, heads bowed to the wind. He tried to read the first chapter of the John Huston biography he’d picked up at a bookstore in Taos, but his mind kept bouncing between the women in his life. He wanted to call Mariana, but there was nothing left to discuss. She’d made her decision and he would have to live with it, whatever that involved. Acceptance, he guessed, though he wasn’t ready to accept anything aside from how profoundly unfair it all was. It was strange that he hadn’t heard from her again, though maybe considering Jesse’s phone call yesterday it wasn’t strange at all.
“Merry Christmas,” his mother said, emerging from her bedroom, cinching her robe tight around her waist. “You’re up early.”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Gavin said, setting down his book.
She yawned. “Too excited to open presents?”
“Something like that.”
His mom walked to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee, adding a shot of Bailey’s. She lifted the bottle as an offering.
“Beat you to it,” he said, raising his cup.
She pulled a skillet from the cabinet. “Since you’re the only one up, you can help me with breakfast.”
“Sure.” Gavin walked to the kitchen and washed his hands. “What should I do?”
She placed a sack of potatoes on the kitchen island. “You can start by peeling these.”
Gavin pulled the vegetable peeler from a drawer and went to work.
“So what happened with Renee?” his mom asked. “We were looking forward to seeing her.”
“I think that relationship might be over.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
“It was sort of inevitable.”
“I’m sure you’ll meet someone else.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Gavin considered telling his mom that he already had, and that he’d somehow managed to botch that relationship as well, but there was no point in compounding his humiliation.
“I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I never felt like Renee was right for you.”
“She apparently felt the same way.” Gavin peeled the last potato and looked to his mother. “Now what?”
“Quarter them and then parboil for six minutes,” she said, handing him a large knife. She grabbed two eggs from the fridge and cracked them against the lip of a glass bowl. “There’s a young woman who works part time at the flower shop who’s quite pretty. And single. You’d have to move back here, though.”
“I’m not sure I’d find much work in Chicago.”
“There’s always theater work.”
“I tried that. It didn’t go very well.”
His mom shrugged, as if she didn’t have a ready opinion on that. “What do you plan to do now that your show is canceled?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s time to start thinking about something else.”
“What do you mean?” Gavin asked. The question struck him as an affront.
“Just a more traditional career,” she said, attempting nonchalance, though Gavin knew she was easing toward some larger point. “Something a little more stable—with a fixed income.”
“You think I should quit acting?”
“Of course not,” she said defensively. “I’m just saying you might want to think about finding a full-time job and doing the acting thing on the side.”
“That’s a polite way of telling me to give up, Mom.”
“It’s absolutely not. I just worry about you making a living doing this given your age. And if you really do want to start a family, acting doesn’t seem like the most financially stable profession.”
Gavin finished cutting the potatoes and tipped them into a pot of boiling water. “Would you say the same thing to Sam about dance?”
“No, but that’s because Sam is much younger than you.”
“And more talented.” Gavin had always known that his sister’s talent was far greater than his own. It had been evident since she was young: the comments from other people, particularly strangers, who felt no obligation to dispense with flattery. There was genuine astonishment in her audience, an admiration he’d never experienced in his own line of work. Which was fine. He was nothing if not realistic when it came to appraising his abilities, which were more akin to a skilled tradesman, someone valued for his ability to perform a specific task with a certain baseline competence. Greatness was not a word often associated with his career.
“That’s not true at all,” his mom said. “I think you’re both exceptionally talented, but a career in the arts isn’t the most financially secure path. I learned this when I was younger. You know I stopped dancing when I got pregnant with you. And while I don’t regret the decision, it certainly wasn’t an easy one to make. But that’s life. That’s growing up.”
These were all realities Gavin had already wrestled with and, to some extent, accepted. He knew there was a timer on the acting thing, and he suspected that the cancellation of his show was the death knell to a spectacularly mediocre career. Which would have been fine if it meant settling down with Mariana somewhere high in the mountains, but the circumstances of his personal life made it harder to accept.
“Maybe you’ve heard,” she said, “but your friend from high school—Tony Stanton—he just started his own real estate company. He’s apparently doing quite well.”
“Are you suggesting I go into real estate?”
“Just an idea. Real estate is all about relationships and charisma. You’re certainly charming enough. People generally like you.”
“Not as of late.” Gavin strained the potatoes and dumped them into a large baking pan, then added olive oil and salt before sliding the pan into the oven. Roasted potatoes were one of the few things he knew how to make, though Renee used to tease him that it was pretty difficult to botch such a rudimentary dish. But he was no longer sure that was true. Lately, he’d destroyed everything he’d touched, and he had no reason to believe the potatoes would be spared.
His mom shook her head. “Now you’re just feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I’m in a bit of a funk, so I’m allowed to mope.”
“Speaking of funks, what’s eating your sister?”
“What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t she seem out of sorts?”
Gavin did think she seemed angry, an obvious result of her drug use, but he couldn’t tell his mother this. He wasn’t sure what to make of this quieter, darker version of his little sister. She had changed so much since he’d last seen her. Now she was so tense, so unsmiling, so uninterested in people, even her family. Yesterday, drinking and wandering around the city, something they had always enjoyed so much, seemed to her like an inconvenience, as if there were so many other places she’d rather be.
“She seems lonely,” Gavin finally said. “It probably isn’t easy living overseas.”
“Which is why you’d think she’d be happy to be home. Instead she just seems annoyed. She snaps at me every time I try to talk to her. And I’m still upset she didn’t come to Mass last night.”
“Have you talked to her about it?”
“No.”
“Well,” Gavin said. “That might be a good place to start. You both tend to be a little passive-aggressive.”
She shook her head. “I just want us all to have a nice time together.”
“I know, Mom,” he said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “Me too.”
JONAH
HE SAT ON THE FLOOR of the walk-in closet, thumbing through banded stacks of cash, wondering if there was any way to counteract the terrible act of betrayal they represented. It seemed unlikely. He considered giving the money to a local charity, but while that might assuage his own guilt, it would do little to remedy the situation in which he was now complicit. In fact, it would probably only make things worse. He was on the hook to deliver fifty thousand dollars, and there was no way around that unfortunate truth. He decided he needed to talk to Marcus, not to confess but to get his thoughts on whether there was a future for him back in Gabon.
“Did I wake you?” Jonah asked.
“Merry Christmas,” Marcus said, sounding surprised to hear from him. “I take it you’re back in Chicago.”
“I am.”
“How is it?”
“Cold. And crowded. How are you? Feeling better?” He hadn’t spoken to Marcus in months, and he sounded markedly older, his voice tinny and frail.
“I’ve recovered for the most part, though I still have headaches from time to time. My doctor isn’t convinced they have anything to do with the malaria, though.”
“What’s the news back in Nashville?”
“I’m a bit out of the loop, seeing as how I spend most of my time begging for money.”
“Any success on that front?” Jonah asked, staring at the cash.
“We received a small grant from the National Science Foundation. It’s enough to float us for the next six months.”
“Does that mean I can go back?” Jonah asked. He already knew he was going back, if only to deliver Slinky’s money, though he also hoped Marcus would agree to let him continue his research.
“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “Is that a good idea?”
Marcus had a knack for posing questions that weren’t really questions at all, but rather thinly veiled critiques. Clearly, the answer he was fishing for went something like: No, Marcus, I think I’ve shown myself to be profoundly irresponsible and staggeringly lazy, and it would probably be best for all of us if I spend the spring semester performing grunt work in the lab while I lament the incredible opportunity I somehow squandered. But Jonah wasn’t about to give him that. “Why wouldn’t it be?” he finally said.
“I received an email from Laurent. He said you ran into some trouble.”
“It was nothing.”
“That’s not what Laurent said.”
“Laurent tends to exaggerate. It was a very minor thing.” Jonah had hoped Laurent would be discreet about the arrangement with Slinky. Jonah wasn’t sure how much Marcus knew, but he wasn’t about to offer up any additional information.
“I’m wondering if we should let things cool down a bit before sending you back,” Marcus said.
“I think someone needs to be on the ground over there. Our presence is one of the few things keeping it from being open season on the elephants.”
“And you’d like to be that person?”
“Of course. You and I are the only ones who really know the area.”
“There’s Laurent.”
“Laurent has a family. He doesn’t have time.”
“If I do send you back, I need to see a little more productivity. It was radio silence for a while there toward the end. We’re operating with limited finances, and I need to know you’re actually working.”
“I’ll upload the new recordings in the next few days,” Jonah said. “I think you’ll find some interesting stuff in there. There’s been a lot of activity in the last couple weeks. Lots of new faces. The head count had been dropping for a while, but it started picking back up right before I left. I also noticed a few tuskless elephants, which I’d never seen before. New faces. What do you know about that?”
“You’re kidding,” Marcus said, his voice coming alive with excitement. “You’re certain?”
“Absolutely,” Jonah said, feeling a little swell of pride.
“Females, I presume?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you get photographs?” Marcus asked excitedly.
Jonah hesitated. “No, unfortunately not. I was having issues with the camera.”
“Oh,” Marcus said, clearly disappointed. “Well, that’s interesting, I suppose, though scientifically useless.”
“Sorry,” Jonah said, taken aback by the sharp reaction.
“How’s the thesis coming along?” Marcus asked.
“I’m planning to spend some time in the library while I’m back here. I’ve been taking lots of notes.”
“Notes aren’t going to impress your thesis committee, Jonah. If you want to graduate in the next decade you need to put pen to paper. The research is only valuable insofar as you’re able to analyze it and formulate some sort of defensible conclusion. And at the moment, I’m beginning to have some concerns.”
For someone with no children, Marcus had the unique ability to badger Jonah in a way that even his own parents couldn’t. “I get it,” he finally said. “So where does this leave me?”
“Let me talk it over with the rest of the committee and I’ll get back to you. In the meantime, please spend some time in the library. Give me a good reason to send you back.”
“Okay, sure,” Jonah said, and hung up. He wondered if he should have just told Marcus everything that had happened, his arrangement with Slinky, the meeting with Andre, the myriad ways he’d sullied their research and betrayed their subjects. And Marcus probably would have believed him, maybe even assured him that his actions, in light of such duress, were excusable. But that wasn’t enough. He wasn’t returning because he needed to be absolved by Slinky or Marcus or the judicial system, but rather by the elephants themselves.
He stepped out of the closet and heard voices in the kitchen, his mother and brother, he guessed. Needing to pee, he tried the bathroom door but it was locked.
“What?” Sam’s voice called.
“You almost done in there?” he asked.
“No.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m getting out of the shower.”
Under normal circumstances, Jonah would have taken her word for it even though he hadn’t heard the shower running, but Gavin had planted this idea of drugs and now he couldn’t help but wonder what was really happening on the other side of that door. Recognizing that there was nothing he could do about it and, more important, that it was really none of his business, he walked to the living room, where Gavin and his dad were watching a parade on the television.
“Merry Christmas,” he announced.
“Merry Christmas, kiddo,” his mom said. “Who were you talking to in there?�
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“Someone from school,” Jonah said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.
“The guy from yesterday?” Gavin asked pointedly.
Jonah sat in the recliner across the room. “Different guy, actually.”
“And it went well?” his father asked. “They’re happy with your work over there?”
“I think so,” Jonah said. His phone vibrated in his pocket and he removed it to find a text from Gavin. We need to talk to her. When?
He shot his brother a look from across the room, then typed a response. You do it.
Gavin shook his head in disbelief, then began punching at his phone. You’re an ass.
You’re only gonna make things worse.
How could they be any worse?
Their dad, who sat between them in the living room, looked up from the television every time one of their phones vibrated. “What are you two conspiring about?” he finally asked. Their father had a sixth sense for when something was amiss in the family, and Jonah suspected he was on to them.
“Just some highly classified Christmas business,” Jonah said with a friendly smile.
“Right,” his dad replied, rolling his eyes.
His mom entered from the kitchen and sat on the arm of the recliner. “So how much longer will you be there?” she asked. “In Gabon?”
“Hard to say,” Jonah said, slipping his phone back in his pocket.
“Do you have any interest in getting a regular job—back here in the States?”
“Maybe real estate?” Gavin added. “Mom has a lead on some real estate work.”
“Oh, lighten up, Gavin,” she said. “I was half kidding.”
“Yes,” Gavin said. “But only half.”
Jonah considered it. The idea of a nine-to-five might have seemed appealing a few days ago, when he was being chased out of Africa with a suitcase full of ivory, but a couple days in Chicago reaffirmed his distrust of cities. It was nice being around his family, sure, but the noise and the people and the general griminess of urban areas upset his inner rhythm. And despite the bout of laziness that had plagued his last few weeks in Gabon, he really did, more than anything else, miss the elephants. “I don’t think so,” he finally said.