Among the Dead by Michael Tolkin Page A

he meant by this. Was he throwing the lawsuit away, or was he just taking a vacation from his anger, in which case, was he also taking a vacation from his grief?
    â€˜Go ahead,’ said Frank. ‘Get me one.’
    â€˜What do you want?’ Lowell looked relieved that Frank was joining him. Frank began to make a silent vow not to get drunk, but checked himself. He would try to have only one drink, without making any sacred promises. He asked for a beer, then changed his mind and said he wanted a scotch.
    â€˜You’re sure?’ said Lowell.
    â€˜No, give me a beer.’ He was worried about the headache he might get from scotch, since he hadn’t tasted any in months.
    When Lowell went to the bar, Frank regretted asking for beer; beer was not a drink for comfort but celebration. Nothing here had been achieved except an accidental massacre. And what of the beer he drank in the airport bar, before the news broke? He had been celebrating two things, his thirst and the inevitable fight he would have with his wife, now that she had read the letter.
    Lowell came back with the beer in a glass in one hand and a scotch in the other. Lowell gave him the beer, and he took a sip. It was all wrong, the way he had expected it to taste; it was like having a beer in the morning when he didn’t want a drink at all. Even the pleasant kick of the alcohol annoyed him, an inspiration to relax that made him hate himself, but he finished the glass.
    â€˜That guy over there, at the bar’ – Lowell pointed to a man in a T-shirt and running shorts – ‘his next-door neighbour lost her parents on the flight. She was screaming when he heard her, she was on the phone, and he drove her down here.’
    â€˜Her parents,’ said Frank, dumbly.
    â€˜He heard someone say that it was a bomb on the plane.’
    â€˜Terrorists?’
    â€˜Not necessarily. Maybe someone who worked for the airline.’
    â€˜Does it really make any difference?’ Frank snapped. It was the beer; he was feeling gloomy when he should have been miserable, and the gloom led him to sulk.
    â€˜Why are we here?’ asked Lowell. Meaning: we are sitting in this awful hotel conference room like students detained by the vice-principal who caught them running in the halls. We don’t have to be here. And more: we are better than these others in the room, we have more money. Even more: we can get better lawyers, lawyers as good as the airline will hire.
    â€˜Where would we go?’
    â€˜Home.’
    â€˜I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to see the house.’ He thought this was sloppy of him, cowardly not to face his daughter’sdolls, books, blocks, and his wife’s French shoes, her make-up, their bed.
    Ed Dockery was crossing the room, and Frank knew he was going to have to talk some more about what couldn’t be changed. Frank Gale was Ed Dockery’s assignment. There were other men in the room, with the same sober respect, who moved among a few tables, sitting for ten or so minutes, talking, making notes on legal pads, and Frank guessed that each had been assigned to only a few families, not to spread the airline’s attention so thinly that in the inevitable lawsuits the surviving relatives could add corporate indifference to the list of complaints. ‘We lost our family, but as if that weren’t enough, the airline couldn’t find the time to talk to us for three hours, because they only had two people in charge.’ Like not enough waitresses in a crowded coffee shop.
    Dockery introduced himself to Lowell. Of course Bettina Welch had warned him that Lowell was difficult.
    â€˜I’m his brother,’ said Lowell.
    â€˜There’s been a new development here, and we wanted you to know before it goes on the ten o’clock news.’
    Frank’s heart began to pound, unreasonably he thought, as if he were guilty, and about to be caught for the thing he had