Matt snarled, “You goddamned-”
A shout came from somewhere close. Kate’s voice, high and shrill. “Oh, my God! Matt, stop it! Oh, my God, Jimmy, I’m so sorry!”
Confused and disoriented, Matt relaxed his grip on Nourwood’s throat and said, “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Matt, get off of him!” Kate shrieked.
Nourwood’s olive-complexioned face had gone a shade of purple. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed. “What you must have… thought,” Nourwood managed to choke out. “I’m-so sorry. Your wife told me to just go down and grab… all my tools are in storage.” He struggled, was finally able to sit up. “Laura’s been nagging me for days to put up a fence around her tomato garden to keep out the chipmunks, and I didn’t realize how-how much clay’s in the soil here. You can’t pound in the stakes without a decent sledgehammer.”
Matt turned around, looked at Kate. She looked mortified. “Jimmy, it’s all my fault. Matt’s been on edge recently.”
Now Laura Nourwood was there, too, ice clinking festively in a tumbler of scotch. “What’s going on here? Jimmy, you okay?”
Nourwood rose unsteadily, brushed off his suit jacket and pants. “I’m fine,” he said.
“What happened?” his wife said. “Was it the vertigo again?”
“No, no, no,” Nourwood chuckled. “Just a misunderstanding.”
“Sorry,” Matt mumbled. “Shoulda asked before I jumped you.”
“No, really, it’s all my fault,” Kate said later as they sat in the living room, drinks in their hands. Kate had heated up some frozen cheesy puff pastry things from Trader Joe’s and kept passing around the tray. “Matt, I probably should have told you I’d invited them over, but I just saw Laura in her backyard planting out her tomatoes, and we started talking, and it turns out Laura’s into heirloom tomatoes, which you know how much I love. And I was telling her that I thought it was probably too early to plant out her tomatoes around here, she should wait for last frost, and then Jimmy got home, and he asked if we had a sledgehammer he could borrow, so I just asked these guys over for a drink…”
“My bad,” Matt said, still embarrassed about how he’d overreacted. But it didn’t mean his underlying suspicions had been wrong-not at all. Just in this one particular instance. Nothing else about the man had changed. None of his lies about his job or his college or what he was really doing.
“Tomorrow we’ll all laugh about it,” Kate said.
I doubt that, Matt thought.
“What do you mean?” said Nourwood. “I’m laughing now!” He turned to his wife, put his big ham hock hand over hers. “Just please don’t ask our neighbors for a cup of sugar! I don’t think I’m up to it.” He laughed loud and long, and the women joined him. Matt smiled thinly.
“I was telling the ladies about my day from hell,” Nourwood said. “So my sister Nabilah calls me last night to tell me she has a job interview in Boston and she’s flying in this morning.”
“Nothing like advance notice,” said Laura.
Nourwood shrugged. “This is my baby sister we’re talking about. She does everything last-minute. She graduated from college last May, and she’s been looking for a job for months, and all of a sudden it’s rush rush rush. And she asks can I pick her up at the airport.”
“God forbid she should take a cab,” Laura said.
“What is an older brother for?” Nourwood said.
“Nabilah’s what you’d call a princess,” said his wife.
“Really, I don’t mind at all,” said Nourwood. “But of course it had to be on the same day that my car’s going into the shop.”
“I think she planned it that way,” Laura said.
“But the car dealership couldn’t have been nicer about it. They were even willing to bring the loaner to a gas station on Washington Street. But I got a late start leaving the house, and then the kid had all kinds of paperwork he wanted me to fill out, even though I thought we’d gone over all of this on the phone. So there I am on the highway in this rented car, driving to the airport like a madman. Only I don’t know where the turn signal is, and come to find out the parking brake is partly on, so the car’s moving all jerky, like a jackrabbit. And I don’t want to be late for Nabilah, because I know she’ll freak out.”
“God forbid she might have to wait a couple of minutes for her chauffeur,” Laura said acidly.
“So right when I’m driving into the parking garage at Logan, my cell phone rings, and who should it be but Nabilah? She got an earlier flight, and she’s been waiting at the airport for half an hour already, and she’s freaking out, she’s going to be late for the interview, and where am I, and all of this.”
Laura Nourwood shook her head, compressed her lips. Her dislike for her sister-in-law was palpable.
“But I’ve already taken the ticket from the garage thingy, so I turn around, and I have to plead with the man in the booth to let me out without paying their minimum.”
“What was it, like ten bucks, Jimmy?” said his wife. “You should have just paid.”
“I don’t like throwing away money,” Nourwood replied. “You know that. So I race over to Terminal C and I park right in front of arrivals and get out of the car, and all of a sudden this state trooper’s coming at me, yelling, and writing me a ticket. He says I’m not allowed to park in front of the terminal. Like I’ve got a car bomb or something. In this little rented Ford!”
“You do look Arab,” his wife said. “And these days…”
“Persians are not Arabs,” Nourwood said stiffly. “I speak Farsi, not Arabic.”
“And I’m sure that Boston cop appreciates the distinction,” Laura said. She looked at Matt and shrugged apologetically. “Jimmy hates cops.”
Annoyed, Nourwood shook his head. “So as soon as I get back in the car to move it, Nabilah comes out, with like five suitcases-and she’s not even staying overnight! So I race downtown to Fidelity, and then I have to floor it to get to Westwood because my eleven a.m. got moved up an hour.”
“Don’t tell me you got a speeding ticket,” Laura said.
“When it rains, it pours,” Nourwood said.
“Westwood?” Matt said. “You told me you work for ADS. They’re in Hopkinton.”
“Well, if you want to get technical about it, I actually work for Dataviz, which is a subsidiary of ADS. They just got acquired by ADS six months ago. And let me tell you, this isn’t going to be an easy integration. They still haven’t changed the name on the building, and they still answer the phone ‘Dataviz’ instead of ADS.’”
“Huh,” Matt said. “And… your sister-did she go to UW too?”
“UW?” Nourwood said.
“Didn’t you tell me you went to Madison?” Matt said. He added drily, “Maybe I misheard.”
“Ah, yes, yes,” Nourwood said. “James Madison University. JMU.”
“JMU,” Matt repeated. “Huh.”
“That happens a lot,” Nourwood said. “Not Wisconsin. Harrisonburg, Virginia.”
Then that would explain why the University of Wisconsin had no record of any James Nourwood, Matt thought. “Huh,” he said.
“And no, Nabilah went to Tulane,” said Nourwood. “I guess we Nouris feel more comfortable in those southern colleges. Maybe it’s the warmer climate.”
“Nouris?”
“I married a feminist,” Nourwood said.
“I’m confused,” Matt said.
“Laura didn’t want to take my name, Nouri.”
“Why should I?” his wife put in. “I mean, how archaic is that? I was Laura Wood my whole life until we got married. Why shouldn’t he change his name to James Wood?”
“And neither one of us likes hyphenated names,” Nourwood said.
“This girlfriend of mine named Janice Ritter,” Laura said, “married a guy named Steve Hyman. And they merged their names and got Ryman.”