He drifted to a stop on the side of the road. His foot just wasn’t applying any pressure anymore. He cut the engine but left the headlights on; he couldn’t see one foot past them. He lowered his window and listened to the dark desert. It sounded like a riot.
“Hamilton?” the voice was saying. “Hamilton? You still there?”
And just then — it was as perfect as if he’d scripted it — a coyote split the darkness wide open with a long, soulful howl.
“Jesus Christ!” said the voice. “Are you okay? I thought you said you were in upstate New York!”
Hamilton smiled and snapped the phone shut. His consciousness was separating like the stages of a rocket, and he saw that he was probably not going to remember any of this tomorrow, not how lucid and how reborn he felt right now, not even how he got here; he often blacked out when he drank like this. What a shame. Not being able to recall it meant he would only have to go off in search of it again. He lay down across the front seat; it was cold now, but the air was so amazing there was no question of rolling up the windows. Besides, somebody would come looking for him. They were probably out looking for him already.
SHE’D LAID EYES ON MICHAEL AARON for the first time four days ago, at Harvey’s funeraclass="underline" scruff-bearded, balding, a little doughier than a young man his age should have been — in most respects, she had to admit, a considerably less charismatic figure than his proud father had led her to expect — but her heart went out to him anyway because of the way he had to carry the burden of mourning all by himself. Harvey had no other family, save for a sister with Alzheimer’s who was in a home and had forgotten her brother’s face many years ago. And Michael had no wife, no girlfriend, no partner if he was gay, which he might have been for all Helen knew. He was the Aaron family. He shook every hand, accepted every kiss, listened to every story, and Helen’s stomach clenched whenever the crowd around him parted enough to let her see the panic in his face, the fear of making some religious or social gaffe or not recognizing some name the speaker would have expected him to know. All, presumably, while trying to make sense of the loss of his father, and of his own new status as an orphan. One day that will be Sara, Helen caught herself thinking; she had a kind of guilty oversensitivity to the lot of the only child. All that afternoon she had wanted to cross the synagogue, and then the reception room in the basement of the synagogue, to talk to him, to try to help him out in some unobtrusively kind way, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Because she was the one who had killed Harvey. She knew it was ridiculous, which was why she’d never said it out loud to anyone, but the fact remained that he had offered himself to her and she had rejected him and patted him condescendingly on his drunken head and sent him off to his death. She’d watched through the Peking Grill window to make sure he got into a cab, it was true, but what consolation was it to know that you’d done the minimum, when there was something more that you might have done, only you didn’t do it? She could have called his cellphone to make sure he’d checked in to the Roosevelt, or she could have called the hotel itself. She could, for that matter, just have had sex with him, and then waited thirty seconds until he fell asleep and taken the train back to Rensselaer Valley an hour late and told Sara some lie to explain it and Harvey would still be alive now. Was she too good for that, did she imagine? It would have been the first sex she’d had in at least a year, probably longer. Maybe it was the last such proposition she’d ever get. If so, it would serve her right. With her haughtiness and her rectitude and her timidity, she had sent that sweet man on the road to die. She was too afraid even to tell his son that she was sorry for his loss, for fear that he would see right through her civilities to all she knew.
But now a second chance had come her way to speak to Michael, and if she thought the first one was potentially awkward, it had little on what awaited her this afternoon. Harvey didn’t have a regular accountant, it seemed, but he did have a lawyer, and she and Michael had been summoned to the lawyer’s office at 2:30. Helen had spoken on the phone to this charmless gentleman, whose last name was Scapelli, for a couple of hours already, and so she knew what to expect from this meeting, though Michael did not. Scapelli’s office had no waiting room or reception area, so Helen sat and waited in a chair about two feet from his desk as he unself-consciously took phone calls about other matters. The recessed shelves above and behind him, where she might have expected to see diplomas or family photos, were given over to a large collection of mounted, autographed baseballs. When Michael got off the elevator at about 2:45, though she remembered him vividly she was astonished to see him as he apparently dressed every day, even for a meeting such as this: a short-sleeved Roots t-shirt worn over a long-sleeved one, torn jeans, and black Converse sneakers of the type (if not the color) that was popular when Helen herself was a kid. Michael, she had reason to know, was thirty-two years old. He was a musician and a DJ, which, Harvey had once explained to her, were really the same thing in this day and age. Harvey had left him everything, which consisted of the house in New Paltz, the now-totaled car, and the business.
“Have a seat, Michael,” Scapelli said absently, even though Michael had not waited for the invitation. He slumped in the tattered armchair beside Helen’s and nodded to her, a little hesitantly, as if he wasn’t sure the two of them were there for the same meeting.
“Helen Armstead,” she said to him. “I worked for your dad.”
“What’s up,” Michael said.
“So we are technically here for the reading of your father’s will,” Scapelli said, “though it’s kind of a formality in this case because you both already know what’s in it and it’s only about five lines long anyway. We’ve already talked about the house — have you changed your mind about any of that?”
“Nope,” Michael said. “Sell that puppy.”
Neither man’s face betrayed a hint of the surprise Helen felt at this bit of unsentimentality. What business of hers was it, though? Still, she couldn’t help feeling a kind of empathetic sting on behalf of the young man’s mother. Michael glanced at her, suddenly embarrassed.
“I mean, lots of good memories there and whatnot,” he said. “But New Paltz? Professionally it’s just not possible for me. Plus the fact is I really need the money.”
“Of course,” Helen said. “I mean, it’s entirely up to you.”
“Plus who wants to be that guy? The guy living in his dead parents’ house?”
“Which brings us to the business at hand,” Scapelli said. “Your father didn’t keep the most meticulous records, but we’ve spent the last few days doing some forensic work—”
“Say what?” Michael said.
“Some forensic accounting work, that’s just the term for it, and, in a nutshell, your father’s estate right now consists mostly of debt. The big issue is income tax, on which he was apparently a little behind. Now don’t worry, you’re not legally responsible for that debt just because he willed his estate to you. We can just declare Harvey Aaron Public Relations a bankrupt entity and shut it down, and, from your point of view, that’s that. But there are other ways to go as well, which is why Ms. Armstead is here with us today.” He nodded meaningfully at Helen to let her know, as if they had rehearsed all this, that here was her cue.