The Easy Way Out (13 page)

“If we're going to make an offer, we should make it soon.”

“Probably the sooner the better,” I said.

“Tomorrow,” Arthur said.

“At the latest.”

Arthur was beaming. “I don't think you'll regret this, Patrick. I really don't.”

I did regret it, the minute I realized what I'd said. We drove off down the narrow street, and as soon as the house was out of sight, I turned up the volume on the tape player and concentrated on the fact that in a little more than a week I'd be on the shuttle headed to New York.

Part

• • •

2

Ten

T
he day before our dinner date, I called my mother to confirm our plans. Rita told me that she'd invited my father, and Ryan, who otherwise would have been stuck home alone, had decided to come, too. I should have known the dinner would evolve into a group project, but I was disappointed anyway. I'd imagined that my mother and I would have an easier time of discussing Tony's wedding without the rest of the crowd. To get revenge, I lied and told her I'd invited Sharon.

“Sharon?”

“You remember Sharon. You and your husband came for dinner once when I lived at her house.”

“Believe me, I haven't forgotten Sharon. That would be like forgetting the Statue of Liberty. She was wearing sandals and a sundress in February. Five minutes after we walked in the door, she cornered me and asked if I'd ever regretted marrying your father. As if it isn't obvious. Why would you invite her?”

“Well, why would you invite Ryan and Dad?”

“I hope you're not comparing them to that woman, Patrick. Please. If you have to invite someone, why don't you invite Arthur? At least he doesn't talk as much.”

“Unfortunately,” I said, “she decided not to come.”

“I'm sorry the idea of having dinner with us was so unappealing
to her. Just make sure you're on time. If Ryan doesn't eat by eight, his blood sugar goes crazy, the poor slob. He inherited your father's health. Have you signed any papers about this house deal?”

“Nearly,” I said.

“Nearly? What are you waiting for, dear?”

I told her I was having trouble finding a pen and quickly hung up. Arthur had already made an offer on the house, and we were waiting to hear if it was accepted. Arthur and I were both nervous about the outcome, although for different reasons.

*   *   *

The next evening, I was held up at the office by an emergency involving one of the other agents.

Grace was an ex-nurse, a frail, somewhat timid woman in her late thirties, who seemed to be constitutionally incapable of contradicting anyone. No matter what ridiculous vacation scheme a person came in with, Grace would cheerfully say, “I think that sounds wonderful. I'm sure you're going to have a wonderful time,” and send them off. She refused to warn people about food poisoning, political unrest, or potential health and safety hazards, theorizing that it wasn't fair to upset them and ruin their vacations. “Oh, don't worry about the water,” I'd heard her say countless times. “I'm sure it's fine. Why worry about water? Just enjoy yourself.”

It was hard to imagine Grace enjoying herself under any circumstances. She had absolutely no personal experience with travel, because she was terrified of every form of transportation except the swan boats that glided across the pond on Boston Common. She enrolled frequently in fear-of-flying seminars, but never dredged up the courage to take the flight to Hartford that constituted graduation. I loved being around her; she made me feel adventurous.

This particular crisis concerned the plight of a fifty-three-year-old, recently divorced woman who'd come in looking for a trip to a warm island where she could relax in the sun, be completely safe and unchallenged, and forget the rest of the world and all her personal traumas. Bermuda would have been the most obvious choice, but Grace, inexplicably, had sent her to a small resort town in Jamaica known primarily for its liberal attitudes toward nude sunbathing and drug use. The client had called around four-thirty that afternoon, demanding that she be put on the next plane back to civilization so she could file a lawsuit against Only Connect. She'd arrived in the town on a broken-down school bus, and as soon as her feet hit the dirt road, she was accosted by a mob of men trying to sell her ganja,
nose candy, LSD, magic mushrooms, and aloe vera massages. Accompanied by a team of Rastafarians, she landed at her hotel—a glorified campground—in time to see “a bunch of filthy drug addicts” washing off in an outdoor communal shower. Once she'd closed the door to the wobbly shack that Grace had described as a “private villa,” she heard a scrambling noise from above. She looked up and saw a mongoose chasing a rat across the beams near the ceiling.

After lambasting her with insults and accusations for a full five minutes, the customer told Grace she'd call back in an hour, expecting arrangements to have been made for her immediate departure from the island.

Now Grace was sitting at her desk awaiting the second call, pale and prim, mumbling something that sounded vaguely like an affirmation. She had her hair pulled back in a bun and was wearing a tidy blue dress with a white lace collar. Very possibly, Jane Eyre would have ended up looking like Grace if she'd gone off to work at Bitternutt Lodge in Ireland instead of marrying Rochester. There was no way Grace could fly the woman out of Jamaica in the next forty-eight hours. There were several large resort hotels not too far away, but they were all booked to capacity. Even if the customer did agree to stay for a week, she'd have to spend at least two nights in the shack. Between sobs, Grace was blaming Sharon for the situation. Sharon had a special affection for this particular town and recommended it often. She herself spent at least two weeks there every year and had had two of the most passionate love affairs of her life at that very campground. She was perched on the edge of Grace's desk, smoking and frowning, listening to her accuser with no visible remorse.

“I send people there all the time,” she finally said, “and they love it. But I don't suggest it for everyone. I wouldn't suggest you go there, for example. Don't blame the place, blame your own bad judgment, Grace. The whole thing doesn't make sense to me; how can these people she's complaining about be ‘dirty drug addicts' and be taking a shower? And I'd like to know how she managed to find the only working telephone in the whole town.”

The boss had gotten word of the threatened lawsuit. He was pacing around, chewing his lips. Tim was a lean, nervous wreck of a human being. He had his Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard, and he clearly wasn't cut out for the frantic pace of the business world. There were always rumors circulating around the office that he was being treated for some nervous disorder or other, but I doubt any of
them was true. Still, he dashed around the little rooms that made up the agency, sweating through his shirts, tugging on his lips, desperately trying to keep everyone happy and in line. He was intimidated by Sharon, which was probably for the best, as she had much better business instincts than he did.

Grace had asked me to stand by her until she finished with the second call, so I felt obliged to hang around. It was after six and the office was closed by the time the call came. Grace answered with a barely audible hello. “We're all deeply sorry about this, Ruth,” she began, “but the fact is, you're going to have to spend tonight in the villa. Yes, just tonight, that's all. One night. And maybe tomorrow night, too.”

Tim looked to Sharon for help, and she grabbed the phone.

“Is this Ruth? Ruth, this is Sharon Driscoll. I'm Grace's supervisor here. It sounds like you're having some trouble adjusting.” She winked at me. “Put them on the defensive” was one of Sharon's mottoes. “Who? Ruth Bourne? You're kidding. I didn't know it was that Ruth. How was that hotel in Seattle? Sure, I send everyone there; they all love it. If it wasn't for me, that hotel would have gone out of business years ago. Did you mention my name? And did you get treated like royalty? Good. What was in the fruit basket? Why didn't you come to me for this trip? Yeah, but I wouldn't have been too busy for you. So what's going on down there?” She motioned us all out of the office and told us to shut the door on the way.

Grace, Tim, and I went to the reception desk and listened to Fredrick yawn his way through a tale of a torrid love affair he was having with a sixty-three-year-old Catholic priest. Ten minutes later, Sharon emerged, calm and smoking. “You should have told me who it was. Ruth's completely insane, but if you know how to talk to her, she's fine.”

“Did she say anything about the lawsuit?” Tim asked.

“Grow up, Tim. There's not going to be any lawsuit. She's staying. I gave her the name of this guy I know pretty well. I told her to look him up and tell him I sent her. He'll introduce her around, and I guarantee she won't set foot on American soil until June.”

Eleven

I
was close to an hour late in leaving the office, and the traffic out to the suburbs was predictably heavy. I was driving my Yugo, a red piece of rusting metal I'd bought two years earlier against the strong objections of Tony, Arthur, Sharon, and two friends who owned one. My theory is that all cars are worthless junk, a danger to your well-being and the health of the entire planet, so it's best to spend as little money on them as possible. I thought it was a brilliant purchase. The Yugo hadn't given me any trouble at all, and I loved cutting off the old Volvos that dominate the streets of Cambridge in such a small, ugly, cheap red car. It made me feel powerful.

It was one of those early evenings in late March that inspire deep longing. The trees along the side of the highway were mostly bare, and the air was fragrant with the smells of approaching spring—some combination of mud and rotting leaves. I loved knowing that, at least for the next month or so, the northern hemisphere was still tipped comfortably away from the sun. I kept the windows rolled down so I could stick my hand out from time to time to make sure there wasn't a sudden surge in temperature. Late days in spring often make me yearn for baseball games and high school days. The yearning makes no sense at all, since I've never watched even a single baseball game, and all through high school I was friendless and miserable. I
spent most of my youth and adolescence sitting in movie theaters and reading true-crime books about parents killing their children or children killing their parents. I had a passing interest in a variety of solitary athletic pursuits—biking, running, swimming, and calisthenics—mostly, I suspect, because they suppressed hormonal urges I found confusing.

Ryan, Tony, and I are close in age, but we never spent much time together once we got to high school. Ryan had a thoroughly undistinguished career as a left fielder on the intramural baseball team and played drums in a rock band that never made it out of the bass player's garage. Sometimes, when distracted, Ryan still drummed on tabletops or on the dashboard of a car. I don't think he ever entirely gave up his dreams of being a rock star, although it was hard to tell what Ryan dreamed about. I had trouble believing he dreamed at all.

Tony, of course, had the most active social life of the three of us; starting in junior high, he had a steady stream of girlfriends calling the house and cruising the neighborhood in hopes of catching sight of him. At the dinner table, he and my father would have long, explicit battles about Tony's involvement with his latest “slut,” whom my father, in fishing for details, would invariably accuse of being pregnant or having a venereal disease. Tony would accuse my father of taking his frustrations out on him, knock back his chair, and leave the table in a melodramatic huff. My mother would worry over Tony's unfinished meal and chastise my father for talking about sex in front of her, while Ryan complimented the food and reached for thirds. I usually took solace in the basement, where I'd smoke pot and assume some ersatz yoga position that quickly degenerated into masturbation.