the empty beer can on his windowsill, and this sun in his eyes and that alarm clock beep-beep-beeping on his bedside table. It was the faucet, dripping, he kept forgetting to fix. His life, all his.
He shut off the alarm, but didn’t get out of bed right away. He didn’t want to lift his head just yet because he didn’t want to know if he had a hangover. If he had a hangover, the first day back to work would seem twice as long, and the first day back after a suspension, with all the shit he’d have to eat and all the jokes he’d have to hear at his expense, was going to seem pretty damn long in the first place.
He lay there and heard the beeping from the street, the beeping from the cokeheads next door who kept their TVloud from Letterman through Sesame Street , the beep of his ceiling fan, microwave, and smoke detectors, and the humming beep of the fridge. It beeped on the computers at work. It beeped on cell phones and PalmPilots and beeped from the kitchen and living room and beeped a constant beep-beep-beep on the street below and down at the station house and in the tenements of Faneuil Heights and the East Bucky Flats.
Everything beeped these days. Everything was fast and fluid and built to move. Everyone was getting along in this world, moving with it, growing up.
When the fuck did that start happening?
That’s all he wanted to know, really. When had the pace picked up, left him staring at everyone’s backs?
He closed his eyes.
When Lauren left.
That’s when.
B RENDAN H ARRIS LOOKED at the phone and willed it to ring. He looked at his watch. Two hours late. Not exactly a surprise, since time and Katie were never on what you’d call a first-name basis, but man, today of all days. Brendan just wanted to go . And where was she, if she wasn’t at work? The plan had been that she’d call Brendan during her shift at Cottage Market, go to her half sister’s First Communion, and then meet him afterward. But she hadn’t gone into work. And she hadn’t called.
He couldn’t call her. That had been one of the big downsides of their being together ever since the first night they’d hooked up. Katie was usually one of three places—at Bobby O’Donnell’s place in the early days of her and Brendan’s relationship, in the apartment she’d grown up in on Buckingham Avenue with her father, stepmother, and two half sisters, or in the apartment above where a shitload of her crazy uncles lived, two of whom, Nick and Val, were legends of psychosis and really, really bad impulse control.And then there was her father, Jimmy Marcus, who hated Brendan deeply and for no logical reason that either Brendan or Katie could figure out. Still, Katie had been clear about it—over the years her father had made it his mandate: stay away from the Harrises; you ever bring one home, I disown you.
According to Katie, he was usually a rational guy, her father, but she told Brendan one night, tears dropping to his chest, “He’s nuts when it comes to you. Nuts. He’s drunk one night, right? I mean, hammered, and he starts going on about my mom, how much she loved me and everything, and then he says, he says, ‘The fucking Harrises, Katie, they’re scum.’”
Scum. The sound of the word caught in Brendan’s chest like a pile of phlegm.
“‘You stay away from them. Only thing in life I demand of you, Katie. Please.’”
“So how’d it happen?” Brendan said. “You ending up with me?”
She’d rolled over in his arms and smiled sadly at him. “You don’t know?”
Truth be told, Brendan didn’t have a clue. Katie was Everything. A Goddess. Brendan was just, well, Brendan.
“No, I don’t know.”
“You’re kind.”
“I am?”
She nodded. “I see you with Ray or your mother and even everyday people on the street, and you’re just so kind, Brendan.”
“A lotta people are kind.”
She shook her head. “A lot of people are nice. It’s not the same thing.”
And Brendan, thinking about it, had
He shut off the alarm, but didn’t get out of bed right away. He didn’t want to lift his head just yet because he didn’t want to know if he had a hangover. If he had a hangover, the first day back to work would seem twice as long, and the first day back after a suspension, with all the shit he’d have to eat and all the jokes he’d have to hear at his expense, was going to seem pretty damn long in the first place.
He lay there and heard the beeping from the street, the beeping from the cokeheads next door who kept their TVloud from Letterman through Sesame Street , the beep of his ceiling fan, microwave, and smoke detectors, and the humming beep of the fridge. It beeped on the computers at work. It beeped on cell phones and PalmPilots and beeped from the kitchen and living room and beeped a constant beep-beep-beep on the street below and down at the station house and in the tenements of Faneuil Heights and the East Bucky Flats.
Everything beeped these days. Everything was fast and fluid and built to move. Everyone was getting along in this world, moving with it, growing up.
When the fuck did that start happening?
That’s all he wanted to know, really. When had the pace picked up, left him staring at everyone’s backs?
He closed his eyes.
When Lauren left.
That’s when.
B RENDAN H ARRIS LOOKED at the phone and willed it to ring. He looked at his watch. Two hours late. Not exactly a surprise, since time and Katie were never on what you’d call a first-name basis, but man, today of all days. Brendan just wanted to go . And where was she, if she wasn’t at work? The plan had been that she’d call Brendan during her shift at Cottage Market, go to her half sister’s First Communion, and then meet him afterward. But she hadn’t gone into work. And she hadn’t called.
He couldn’t call her. That had been one of the big downsides of their being together ever since the first night they’d hooked up. Katie was usually one of three places—at Bobby O’Donnell’s place in the early days of her and Brendan’s relationship, in the apartment she’d grown up in on Buckingham Avenue with her father, stepmother, and two half sisters, or in the apartment above where a shitload of her crazy uncles lived, two of whom, Nick and Val, were legends of psychosis and really, really bad impulse control.And then there was her father, Jimmy Marcus, who hated Brendan deeply and for no logical reason that either Brendan or Katie could figure out. Still, Katie had been clear about it—over the years her father had made it his mandate: stay away from the Harrises; you ever bring one home, I disown you.
According to Katie, he was usually a rational guy, her father, but she told Brendan one night, tears dropping to his chest, “He’s nuts when it comes to you. Nuts. He’s drunk one night, right? I mean, hammered, and he starts going on about my mom, how much she loved me and everything, and then he says, he says, ‘The fucking Harrises, Katie, they’re scum.’”
Scum. The sound of the word caught in Brendan’s chest like a pile of phlegm.
“‘You stay away from them. Only thing in life I demand of you, Katie. Please.’”
“So how’d it happen?” Brendan said. “You ending up with me?”
She’d rolled over in his arms and smiled sadly at him. “You don’t know?”
Truth be told, Brendan didn’t have a clue. Katie was Everything. A Goddess. Brendan was just, well, Brendan.
“No, I don’t know.”
“You’re kind.”
“I am?”
She nodded. “I see you with Ray or your mother and even everyday people on the street, and you’re just so kind, Brendan.”
“A lotta people are kind.”
She shook her head. “A lot of people are nice. It’s not the same thing.”
And Brendan, thinking about it, had
Similar Books
