wouldn’t stop coughing and sneezing. It was a nasty, nostril-clearing sound, and the woman would immediately slap him in the back of the head and say, “Alex, I told you to cover your mouth.”
The boy would flinch, then slowly uncoil himself and say, in a high, nasally voice, “Sorry, Mom.”
Once, Alex’s sleeve had pulled up, exposing a fresh bandage around his elbow. His mother rushed to cover that up, and then whispered something into his ear.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said.
Right before they landed, the woman turned to Jeff and said, “Allergies,” and rolled her eyes.
He just smiled and nodded and waited for the brown hazy air of Los Angeles to appear on the horizon.
But they were here now, finally, and he could feel the tension headache that had plagued him for the last week slowly going away. When he got back to Littleton…Well, he would worry about Littleton when he had to. Right now, all his thoughts were on seeing Colin Wyndham again. Back when they were roommates at Harvard, Jeff would have sworn there wasn’t a woman alive who could lasso the irredeemable and profligate Colin Wyndham into marriage, but apparently L.A. had produced such a woman.
This was going to be the bachelor party of the century.
The intercom chimed and the flight attendant spoke up, telling them the local time and temperature and informing them to keep their seat belts fastened and to refrain from using electronic devices until they were stopped at the terminal.
“Will do,” Jeff muttered, and took out his cell phone and flipped it open.
He sent a quick text message to Colin.
on the ground finally
A moment later, Colin wrote back:
took you long enough. got a surprise for you. you’re not gonna believe it.
Jeff laughed. Typical Colin. He wrote:
what kind of surprise
The flight attendant was looking his way. Jeff put the phone down and tried to look innocent. It was a silly thing to do. He knew that. It wasn’t like she was going to call in the air marshals on him. Images flooded his mind of dark-suited men with pistols in their hands boarding the plane, demanding his cell phone, dragging him kicking and screaming and pleading into a bare room for hours of absurd questioning that would make him feel like a character in an Albert Camus novel.
The thought made him laugh. But then he thought of the questions the real police were likely to ask him and the laughter died in his throat.
After all the good times at Harvard, he and Colin had gone their separate ways. Colin was heir to the Mertz family fortune, all $1.3 billion of it. Harvard had been a C-average joke to him. He had no worries, no need to bother with graduate school or law school or medical school or anything, really. There was college, because he had to, and then after that, the world opened up like a sun-dappled delta plain of privilege and pampering.
For Jeff, there were scholarships to keep, which he did. He graduated with a fairly respectable 3.86 GPA, left Cambridge and went to Colorado University for law school, where he did two years before the crack-up that led to flunking out, which in turn led to missing payments on his student loans and racking up $18,000 worth of credit card debt. Now, he was working as a store manager at Blockbuster and waking up everyday in a shabby little efficiency apartment over a garage in Littleton, Colorado, with the constant panicked feeling that he was drowning.
Colin knew the bit about law school, and he knew about the Blockbuster job. He could probably infer the rest. He wasn’t stupid, after all. He was a drug-addled party animal, but he wasn’t stupid. That was probably why he offered to pay for this whole weeklong party to Vegas. But of course Jeff couldn’t allow that. There was a deep vein of pride in him that would rather deny the truth than let it be said out in the open. And that was why he had steadily, over the last week, taken cash advances from the credit cards his customers used at his store. All told,
The boy would flinch, then slowly uncoil himself and say, in a high, nasally voice, “Sorry, Mom.”
Once, Alex’s sleeve had pulled up, exposing a fresh bandage around his elbow. His mother rushed to cover that up, and then whispered something into his ear.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said.
Right before they landed, the woman turned to Jeff and said, “Allergies,” and rolled her eyes.
He just smiled and nodded and waited for the brown hazy air of Los Angeles to appear on the horizon.
But they were here now, finally, and he could feel the tension headache that had plagued him for the last week slowly going away. When he got back to Littleton…Well, he would worry about Littleton when he had to. Right now, all his thoughts were on seeing Colin Wyndham again. Back when they were roommates at Harvard, Jeff would have sworn there wasn’t a woman alive who could lasso the irredeemable and profligate Colin Wyndham into marriage, but apparently L.A. had produced such a woman.
This was going to be the bachelor party of the century.
The intercom chimed and the flight attendant spoke up, telling them the local time and temperature and informing them to keep their seat belts fastened and to refrain from using electronic devices until they were stopped at the terminal.
“Will do,” Jeff muttered, and took out his cell phone and flipped it open.
He sent a quick text message to Colin.
on the ground finally
A moment later, Colin wrote back:
took you long enough. got a surprise for you. you’re not gonna believe it.
Jeff laughed. Typical Colin. He wrote:
what kind of surprise
The flight attendant was looking his way. Jeff put the phone down and tried to look innocent. It was a silly thing to do. He knew that. It wasn’t like she was going to call in the air marshals on him. Images flooded his mind of dark-suited men with pistols in their hands boarding the plane, demanding his cell phone, dragging him kicking and screaming and pleading into a bare room for hours of absurd questioning that would make him feel like a character in an Albert Camus novel.
The thought made him laugh. But then he thought of the questions the real police were likely to ask him and the laughter died in his throat.
After all the good times at Harvard, he and Colin had gone their separate ways. Colin was heir to the Mertz family fortune, all $1.3 billion of it. Harvard had been a C-average joke to him. He had no worries, no need to bother with graduate school or law school or medical school or anything, really. There was college, because he had to, and then after that, the world opened up like a sun-dappled delta plain of privilege and pampering.
For Jeff, there were scholarships to keep, which he did. He graduated with a fairly respectable 3.86 GPA, left Cambridge and went to Colorado University for law school, where he did two years before the crack-up that led to flunking out, which in turn led to missing payments on his student loans and racking up $18,000 worth of credit card debt. Now, he was working as a store manager at Blockbuster and waking up everyday in a shabby little efficiency apartment over a garage in Littleton, Colorado, with the constant panicked feeling that he was drowning.
Colin knew the bit about law school, and he knew about the Blockbuster job. He could probably infer the rest. He wasn’t stupid, after all. He was a drug-addled party animal, but he wasn’t stupid. That was probably why he offered to pay for this whole weeklong party to Vegas. But of course Jeff couldn’t allow that. There was a deep vein of pride in him that would rather deny the truth than let it be said out in the open. And that was why he had steadily, over the last week, taken cash advances from the credit cards his customers used at his store. All told,
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