Providence (24 page)

I tossed an unopened can of beer at Brian and sat next to Mitch.

“You surprised me when you left. You surprised all of us. I didn’t think you had it in you. Don’t you remember how you dragged me to Providence in the first place?”

“Seems to have worked out.”

“A year later you disappear, ripping a hole in Jenny’s heart.”

“Look, we’ve worked it out, okay? Why don’t you understand that? I talked to her on the phone not long ago—”

“That was Christmas, Jack. Six months ago. You did everything you could to make her fall in love with you, then you crushed her, then called her to make up, sent her some guilt-induced gift, then you disappeared again.”

“I didn’t know you were so up on the details of my life.”

“Yeah, I know about it all,” Mitch said. “Every time Jenny cries over you, Erin’s there to listen. Don’t you know what you’ve done to her? I know we used to be best friends, but I wouldn’t be here if Erin didn’t think someone ought to make an effort to reel you back in.”

Used to be best friends?

Brian stepped out from the bathroom. “We’re supposed to meet up with Jason and Terry at eight over at the Fire Yard. This is going to be the night of your lives, gentlemen. I
promise
you. Mitchell, I hope you like having a good time ’cause that’s what’s going to happen to you, my friend.”

I smiled, checking to see if the bravado was boosting Mitchell’s spirits. It wasn’t.

“Before we party tonight, there’s something we gotta do,” Brian said, his tone was casual and calm. “I’ve got to see a friend on business.”

“What kind of business?” Mitch asked.

Brian rolled his eyes and stepped back into the bathroom. Mitch wanted me to say we weren’t going to the party, that we were going out for pizza instead, but I wanted to show him the Chicago I’d been running around in. Maybe then he would see the logic of my choices. I wanted him to be the Mitchell who’d gone to Providence with me.

“I’m different than I was,” he told me. “I’m a Christian now. I was baptized at Erin and Jenny’s church. I don’t want to go to this party. Why don’t
we
do something else, just the two of us, and let Brian go his own way?”

“Look, let’s go for an hour. If you aren’t having the
best
time, we’ll get a cab and do whatever you want. Deal?”

Brian picked his keys up from the table. “You ladies ready for the ball? Let’s go.”

Brian’s black BMW flew through the city streets until we entered areas I no longer recognized. Climbing a steep hill in the darkness, we crossed some invisible line between “good neighborhood” and a neighborhood where the streetlights had all been burnt or shot out. I looked at Mitchell in the dark of the backseat slouched low in the shadow.

“You okay, buddy?” I asked.

Mitchell nodded in silent misery.

Sometimes when I dream of that night, it’s all different. We don’t go to the party. We go downtown to Pizzeria Uno and sit at a table. We talk and laugh until it’s late, and he tells me he understands why I had to go but that it’s time to come home. That I have to go back to Providence. And in that dream, I just know he’s right. We drive through the night and surprise the girls the next morning in Indianapolis. We take them to breakfast at the Waffle House, and everything is put back together.

“How much farther?” I asked. The streets began to look like war zones. There were abandoned cars, buildings with boarded-over windows.

“Half a mile,” Brian said, but there was fear in his voice. His bony hands were gripping the wheel too tightly, his Ichabod Crane face so close he could have hung his nose on it.

He’d been cocky back at the apartment, but not here. I felt the adrenaline rush of blue anger race up the back of my spine. He’d said it was safe, but it wasn’t. We weren’t just his passengers, we were his protection.

“Brian!” I said in a voice that startled him. “Turn the car back.”

“Shut up! We’re almost there.”

“Turn the car around. You’re about to pee in your pants. You know something you’re not telling us.”

“Don’t be such a baby. We’re here, and we’re going to do this.”

Brian turned the car into a drive, the last house on a deadened street, and shoved the shifter into park, leaving the motor running. A lone streetlight behind us beamed murky light on a row of slum houses.

“What are we doing here?” Mitchell asked.

“Relax,” Brian instructed. “I’ll be back in two minutes.” He pushed open the glove box, revealing a handgun.

“What are you doing?”

He shushed me and slid out the door. “Use it if you need to.”

Brian entered the gate of a chain-link fence. Through the shadows we saw his dark figure ascend the front-porch stairs, cross the plank-boarded porch, and knock on the front door. It opened, and he slipped inside.

Mitch and I sat in silence. We were no longer college goof-offs going to a party. We left that world six blocks earlier. This was a different, dangerous world.

“Well, this is interesting,” said Mitchell.

Outside, the night was hot and humid. I could feel beads of perspiration roll underneath my shirt, and my skin itched as if ants were crawling up my back.

“It’ll be all right,” I said as much to myself as to Mitchell.

Five minutes passed, and no Brian. Then the silence broke with the sound of a creaking screen door. Two men stood in the shadows on the porch next door, the orange glow from their cigarettes burning bright when they inhaled.

“This isn’t what I had planned,” I said.

“It’s not what I had in mind either.”

“I know I’m not doing everything the way I should, but—”

“Nothing about this is right.” Mitchell was nervous
and
upset. “I’ve never thought of you as a loser, but that’s what you’ve become.”

“I’m not a loser. I told you, this isn’t my scene. I don’t do drugs. This is Brian’s thing.”

“Yeah, and look who lives with him. Look who goes to his parties and goes along with everything he does. You knew he was doing a drug deal tonight.”

“I didn’t know … Okay, I knew it was drugs, but I didn’t know we would be here.”

“Where did you think we’d go? Kmart? Face the facts. You left Providence, you moved in with a drug dealer, you work where he works, you go to his parties. It’s not just his life, Jack; it’s yours.”

Brian emerged from the dark house, closing the door behind him. As he walked back through the yard, one of the smoking men said something to him, and Brian turned.

”Why don’t you mind your own business?” he sneered, suddenly cocky again.

Instantly the shadowy figures leaped over the high wall and landed solidly in the front yard. In the thick, dreamless half dark, we could see their faces, both of them had shaved heads and muscular physiques. One of the men moved aggressively toward Brian, who turned on his heel and raised the palms of his hands defensively.

“Hey, man, it’s cool. I’m just jerkin’ ya! It’s cool, it’s cool!”

The man continued moving closer to Brian, his pace slowing.

Mitch said, “Looks like company.”

Three more guys appeared in the street behind us, one tapping the barrel of a gun on Mitch’s window.

Brian was talking to the first guy in tones that sounded like he was seeking terms for release, then bluffing and threatening. Finally he said, “Listen, why don’t I just make this right?” He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a small plastic bag, and laid it on the car. The man snatched the bag off the hood and opened it. He took it back to the porch.

We were on a razor’s edge, ready at any second to leap from the car and fight for our lives.

The man returned, demanding Brian’s money. My mouth felt dry, and I closed my eyes to pray. Brian was walking backward, toward the car.

“You want money?” he said.

Step.

“You want
my
money?”

Step.

“You’re taking everything from me, man!” Brian reached for the door handle. “I’ve got a thousand dollars in the glove box. You can have it, but then we’re out of here.” He coolly opened the car door, his body language saying, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to give you a thousand dollars.”

But the men came closer. It was a slow-motion race, but Brian had the lead. He put his knee on the driver’s seat and reached inside the car for the glove box. The men glared at him.

Brian whispered, “When I say ‘now,’ duck.” He pulled the gun from the glove box, along with road maps. “Five seconds.”

In the gloomy streetlight, Brian held out the maps. “You want my stinkin’ money? Here!” He threw the maps over the hood and into the yard.

As the man reached for his thousand dollars in the dark, Brian whispered, “Now” and jumped in, shoving the gears into reverse, hitting the gas hard, and knocking the window tapper to the ground with the back bumper.

We ducked for cover as the sound of gunshots shattered the eerie silence. Brian lowered his head, shifted into drive, and mashed the pedal into the floor. Tires squealed and screamed, the sickening smell of burning rubber filled the car.

Pang, pang, pang.

Small holes appeared in the windows. A second later we were out of there, two blocks away, going sixty miles an hour through dark streets.

The car was silent. I shook my head in disbelief and thought of how I would beat up Brian when we got home. I brushed pieces of broken glass off my shirt and jeans, then turned back to check on Mitchell. He was still on the floor, shaking with fear.

“Hey, buddy, it’s all right. Come on. Get up.”

But Mitchell didn’t move. I grabbed his arm and pushed him up onto the backseat. There was blood on his face, in his hair, on his hands.

“Mitchell’s been shot! Brian, get us to the hospital!”

Brian slowed down, weighing the consequences of bringing in a shooting victim and dealing with the police.

“Brian, now!” I screamed.

“All right!”

I climbed into the backseat to examine Mitchell. The streetlights high above us dispersed their light in rhythm, brighter as they approached, dimmer as they passed. Mitchell was covered in blood, too much blood.

“Mitchell, hang in there. We’re going to get you to a hospital.” I held his bloody hand and squeezed it. He didn’t squeeze back.

“Mitchell!” I shouted, but his eyes were unresponsive. I prayed for the first time in years.
Oh, dear Lord, please don’t let him die!

I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mitchell! Hang in there. Please don’t die!

Mitchell turned his head toward me and spoke, his voice a mere rasp. “It’s all right.”

“Mitchell, I love you like a brother. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry about tonight.” I cradled his head in my arms, whispering to him as the car neared the ER. “It’s all right, Mitchell; we’re almost home.”

I was watching Mitchell’s life passing before me, and you know what I thought of? Tossing a football back and forth with Mitchell when we were just kids. His dad had just bought it for me. An official-sized, officially licensed leather football.

“Do you remember that football, Mitch?”

His body was resting against mine, and I brushed the hair from his face. When we pulled into the bright ER bay, the black stains on his clothes and the seat turned crimson, and his eyes stared directly into mine. He spoke only one word.

“Time.”

It was his last word.

~
T
WENTY-SIX
~

Coming up close
Everything sounds like welcome home
Come home.

—’Til Tuesday

“Coming Up Close”

I went back to Providence to untangle my wearied head. I’d missed sleeping in the wrought-iron-and-wood bed I bought a year before the book came out. I’d missed seeing Mrs. Hernandez, Providence all decorated with Christmas lights, and just being home. Since I’d given Bud a break, I figured I’d grant one to myself.

After dropping my luggage back at the house, I headed toward the Old Village district and parked the Jeep on the gas-lantern-lined streets of West Providence. There’s a Christmas tradition here at Shafford’s department store, one of a handful of downtown stand-alones that, like Duroth’s, has survived the onslaught of suburban malls. The store does most of its business between October and December when customers are in the market for elegant gifts and treasured traditions. Here, people can touch the past, since Shafford’s hasn’t changed much in the past year, or in the past forty.

A small silver bell rang when I opened the door; the same checkered brown and white linoleum that’s been there forever greeted me. I bought a bag of wrapped caramels at the candy counter. It had been years since I’d last been in Shafford’s.

“Can I help you find something?”

I turned toward a beautiful dark-haired saleswoman in her early forties. She wore oval glasses with brown frames securely fastened on a silver chain.

“I’m looking for something special for Christmas,” I told her.

“Something for your wife? Children?” She asked ordinary salesclerk questions, but at Christmas they just reminded me of my singleness.

“Coworkers,” I said.

The woman stepped from behind a window display she’d been rearranging, brushing a wrinkle from her skirt where she’d been kneeling.

“I’m looking for one item I can give to a number of people, something memorable. A sort of keepsake.”

“Do you have a price range in mind?”

“No, just something nice, appropriate for both men and women.”

I followed her to a display case with a glass counter in the corner of the store. “You’ll need more than one? That narrows choices a bit. How many are you looking for?”

I counted aloud. “Let’s see … There’s Arthur and Aaron, Peter, Nancy … Mrs. Hernandez and Raymond … Six I’d guess.”

The woman removed her glasses, and they hung in front of her blue sweater.

So familiar. Have we met before?

“If you’re looking for something distinctive, this may interest you.” She pulled a box from the display case and set it on the counter. Opening it, she lifted out an exquisite clock—a crystal timepiece. She set it on a plum velvet display cloth as gently as you’d free a newborn kitten.