My prospective client was late, but I didn’t really care. Up on Middle Street, the Half Moon Jug Band was playing carols to cheer the shoppers. I could hear the music from where I sat in JavaNet on Exchange, surrounded by kids playing with the computers. I kind of liked JavaNet, even if the geek quotient tonight was a little greater than I would have preferred. It had decent coffee, and some comfortable armchairs. It was also a pretty good place to meet people, as most of those sharing space were too caught up with internet dating or email to bother with what was happening around them. Its window was also a good spot for people-watching, and outside of Newbury Street in Boston or just about anywhere below 14th Street in Manhattan, the window of JavaNet on Exchange was one of my favorite places from which to watch the world pass by. I had already counted at least three women who, if I hadn’t been perfectly happy with Rachel, would probably have refused to have anything to do with me, and rightly so. I had also seen Maurice (pronounced “Maur-reese”) Gardner, who was something of a local celebrity among those of us with a blacker than average sense of humor, since Maurice had once shot and superficially wounded a Santa Claus at the mall. Maurice claimed that Santa had snuck up on him, while Santa, when he gave evidence at Maurice’s trial, claimed that he had merely been heading for the men’s room beside the mall office. Since Maurice was hopped off his head at the time on coke riffed with Persian Brown, a combination likely to make even Buddha a little edgy, the judge sided with Santa Claus and Maurice was locked up for a while for his own protection and to ensure that Christmas did not become a time of mourning for traumatized junior patrons of the mall stores. Maurice was now clean, taking his medication, and working as second mate on a lobster boat. In a nice circularity of events, he volunteered each Christmas to play Santa Claus at some out-of-town children’s charity. From what I heard, he felt it was the least that he could do to make up for his past sins.
I like Portland. It has all the advantages of a city, but still feels like a small town. There’s an eccentricity to it, and a strength of character. It has more coffee shops than maybe any city its size rightfully needs, and there are one or two bars that could slide into the sea and make this a classier place by their absence, but that’s okay. It has a little movie theater that plays mostly foreign imports, and the downtown Nickelodeon has promoted itself back to first-runs. The Public Market is still going, and there are decent bookstores and a big library. All told, it’s not such a bad place to have on your doorstep, and when it preyed on my nerves-as it sometimes did-I had the reassurance that I didn’t actually live here. I could retreat back to my house on the Scarborough marshes within minutes, and watch the sun set on still waters.
Some clown in a bad suit waved at me from the street, and I gave him a noncommittal nod in return. It took me about three minutes to recall him as the real estate salesman who had once tried to convince Rachel and me that our lives would be improved by living in his sinkhole new development out Saco way. Since then, he had experienced some misfortune in his life. He had been screwing his secretary on the side, and when his wife found out she screwed him. His business went to the wall and he was threatened with jail when it emerged that he had been frugal with the information he had provided to the IRS. Both his wife and his secretary gave evidence against him, which says a lot about the kind of person that he was. A couple of the Saco houses had also subsided when a passing child sneezed too loudly, and all kinds of legal storms were now brewing on that front as well. But there he was, a shopping bag from Country Noel in one hand, waving to a man he barely knew but had once tried to rip off with a bad property deal.
Really, you had to love Exchange Street.
My client was now twenty minutes late and counting, but it still didn’t matter. There was life around me; life, and the promise of new life to come. Most of those on the streets were locals, reclaiming the Old Port from the tourists now that summer was gone and the leaf watchers had departed. I could see a group of skater kids dressed in hooded sweats and oversized jeans trying to pretend that the encroaching cold wasn’t bothering them. I guessed that about half of them would be receiving antibiotics and TLC from their moms before the week was out, but they wouldn’t share that fact with their buddies.
I had dropped some cash over at Bull Moose earlier, and now flicked idly through my purchases. Some of them would probably be okay with Rachel, I guessed: the Notwist, and maybe Thee More Shallows. I wasn’t too sure how she would feel about And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, but I’d heard some of their stuff on one of the more vibrant local radio stations and liked it a lot. It was also a cool name for a band, which counted for something. I figured that if I could find a T-shirt with the band’s name on it, I might be allowed to hang out with the slacker kids for a while, at least until the cops came by and decided to haul me in for my own safety.
My client arrived at 6.25 P.M. I knew him by his clothing. He had told me to expect a man in a gray suit with a gray-black tie, a black overcoat protecting him from the cold, and that was what I got. He looked younger than I expected, although I guessed that he was probably close to seventy by now. I decided not to share my Trail of Dead CD with him. I thought it might be pushing things a little on our first meeting. I raised a hand to let him know who I was, and he threaded his way through the computer stations to take a seat with me at the window, casting some suspicious glances at some of the, well, more “sheltered” patrons.
“It’s okay,” I said. “They won’t hurt you.”
He looked a little uncertain, but gave them the benefit of the doubt. “Frank Matheson,” he said, stretching out his hand. It was a big hand, scarred in places. A huge callus stretched across his palm from the base of his thumb. I could feel it as I shook his hand. Matheson owned a machine tool company over in Solon, and was a reasonably wealthy man, but he had clearly come by it through hard graft. I bought him a coffee-black, no sugar-and rejoined him at the window.
“I’m surprised that you don’t have an office,” he said.
“If I had an office I’d have to paint it, then buy chairs and a desk. I’d have to think about what to put on the walls. People would judge me on the quality of my furnishings.”
“And what do they judge you on now?”
“The quality of other people’s coffee. It’s pretty good in this place.”
“You meet all of your clients here?”
“Depends. If I’m not sure about them, I meet them in Star-bucks. If I’m really not sure about them, I meet them at a gas station, maybe offer them a couple of Milk Duds to break the ice.”
A look of confusion crossed his face, as though a small warning light had just tripped in his brain. I get that look a lot.
“You come highly recommended,” he said, apparently to reassure himself rather than to compliment me.
“Probably people I brought to this place.”
“Plus I’ve read about you in the newspapers.”
“Yet still you’re here.”
He made a wavering gesture with his right hand. “I’ll admit that not all of it was complimentary.”
“I believe it’s called ‘balanced reporting.’ ”