“I mean, isn’t that good for your case?” she asks. “Doesn’t that add sympathy, if he’s, you know, mentally challenged?” She’s looking at him as if he has something to say worth listening to.
“See, you have to prove real loss,” he says.
Stacy sips, her eyes unflinching. “The whole thing is unbelievable. I could never do what you do.”
Again, Nicky’s cell phone vibrates. He turns it to silent mode.
“So I say to the father, ‘Go get your son,’ and at first he refuses, but then he comes back in twenty minutes with his kid, who’s smart enough to know he can’t fake being stupid. So we’re all standing there, and I ask the kid, ‘Who’s the president of the United States?’ and the kid just stares at me, clueless. Then I ask the kid, ‘Who’s the football team in Philadelphia?’ and the kid says, ‘Eagles!’ I say, ‘Who’s the quarterback of the Eagles?’ and the kid says, ‘Donovan McNabb!’ and I say, ‘That’s right.’ The old Amish guy interrupts and says, ‘We don’t know football. We wouldn’t know if these are the correct answers or not. What does any of this prove?’” Nicky stops. He can’t remember where his brother was heading with all of this.
“So?”
“So? Well, I say, ‘You’re right. They are the right answers, Mr. Stoltzfus, and what it proves is that I’m not a liar, and I’m not lying when I tell you that this case is worth at least the half-million we’re asking for, because your horse went through this man’s windshield and his son was in the hospital for a month with his skull sawed off so that his brain could return to normal-and it’s only right that your people take responsibility for what happened.’”
Stacy is grinning, anticipating the jackpot finish. Nicky wishes that there were more to the story-or that he could remember the rest of it. He remembers Chris explaining how the Amish collected the money from the community, how, when Chris asked why they didn’t buy insurance, the old Amish guy told him, We believe in two things: God and each other.
“So did you win?”
“Yeah,” he blurts, takes a deep breath. “Five hundred thousand dollars.”
The bluish face of Nicky’s phone lights up a third time.
“Someone’s trying to track you down,” Stacy says.
“My brother,” Nicky says, shaking his head. He turns the phone over.
“You have a brother?”
Nicky goes silent, his thoughts tangled.
“Older or younger?” She’s nearly finished the drink. She offers him the rest before polishing it off.
“Younger.”
“Is he as cute as you?”
Behind her, Victor Gold sets his glass down. The drone of his furious rattle goes on. Stacy seems suddenly flushed again, perhaps embarrassed for her compliment, which has gone unanswered. Nicky wants to say something, but he’s lost in the space of her exposed neck, pinkish in the shadow of her flared collar.
“Is everything all right?” she says.
“Of course, no, it’s fine,” he stutters. “My brother, that’s all. He’s, uh, he’s a bit of a fuckhead. Good-looking, yes, cute, handsome as hell, actually, but a fuckhead. He calls a lot-or I call him, check in on him a lot, make sure he’s not doing anything stupid.” He can hear his brother’s sympathetic voice in his own, and he chokes up. “A man needs to move forward in life. He doesn’t get it.”
“I’m sorry. You want to call him back? I don’t mind-”
“No, no. He’s just-it’s hard to explain-or, it’s actually kind of easy to explain. He smokes a lot of weed and has a shitty job. That’s his life. He wasn’t always that way. He was a good kid, smart. He could have been whatever he wanted. And then my mom died, and then a few years ago my dad shot himself. And he just stopped. And started being a fuckhead. I’m afraid, you know…”
Victor Gold hisses, “Fucking shit,” as he rises from his stool and heads for the kitchen, his shoulder brushing Nicky’s.
Stacy says, “I’m so sorry,” and bows her head into her hand. Nicky is surprised by this sudden display of pity. She reaches for his elbow, offers her tenderness, which is not for him, Nicky understands, but for Chris, who must endure the burden of this faceless brother.
Nicky contemplates the empty stool, the brazenly discarded items on the bar.
He wants to fly from his body. He doesn’t want to be Chris or Victor-just anyone but himself, anyone but the fucked-up son of the ultimate fuck-up.
“You want to go?” he says.
She takes his arm and the moment they hit the sidewalk takes his face into her hands. “I’m so, so sorry,” she says.
“Fuck it,” he mumbles to himself, just as he spots the yellow car whose insides glow when he presses the button on the key he’s aiming toward the street, the silver bunch jangling.
On cue, she turns. “Is that your Maserati?”
They drift toward the brightness under the canopy of birches across the street.
“You have to let me drive,” she says, beaming now.
With a last glance back, he says, “Why not?”
Inside, he imagines the two of them united on a mission to create some new future for themselves. Her smile grows increasingly luminescent, as if draining the light from the overhead lamp. They are ensconced in black leather. As she feels for the ignition, he taps his foot, glares out the window. He flicks open the glove compartment to find the mother lode of dope, rolling papers and all, sealed in a Ziploc bag. At first he doesn’t recognize the blunt silver barrel of a gun, until he reaches for the twinkling Zippo and a finger hooks the trigger guard.
The engine rumbles. The glove compartment door clicks shut. Stacy leans forward, then settles back with arms outstretched and hands gripping the wheel. With a few deft, seemingly practiced maneuvers, she manages to exit the curbside spot and enter the open lane, which appears, in a suspended moment of pure potential, to lead straightaway toward a positively magnificent, if shadowy, future, lined with inferior automobiles.
There is an explosion of force, and they are sailing forward. It is not long before the car veers vaguely right and Nicky leans left, as if to counteract this unfortunate detour. A faint, feminine yelp-followed by the snap, like a mushroom cap, of a sideview mirror-signals the beginning of the end.
The rest feels patently catastrophic, these seconds an eternity of unending metallic screeching. It is as if Nicky is poised at the crotch of a giant zipper, its teeth off kilter, some stubborn force willing these two discordant halves to unite, only so that they can be free of each other once and for all. It makes no sense that they haven’t yet come to a stop, in spite of this ribcurling resistance. How many have they already sideswiped? Three? Ten? She must be gassing it, in spite of the mounting disaster, as if to race toward the inevitable, or from it.
At last, they have come to the T at the end of the road, an instinctive foot on a brake, with the help of the curb, having saved them from the profile of the oblivious brownstone straight ahead. They are heaving in unison, taking in the common air. “I’m bleeding.” Her eyes are locked on her reflection in the rearview mirror. She dabs a fingertip to her forehead. Outside, the world has stopped, while inside, their hearts and thoughts become entwined in mutual terror-albeit born of independent fears.
“I can’t get a D.U.I.,” she utters.
“I have to go back,” he says.
The sidewalks are empty, the windows of the surrounding houses dark or, if lit, free of shadows.
“I make $750,000 a year.” She seems to be in a trance. “I’m the lead anchor on a major network in the fourth largest market in the country.” She sets her hollow gaze on Nicky and asks, apparently in earnest, “What the fuck am I thinking?” After a pause, she screams, “I’m asking you! What the fuck am I doing here?”
“In Philly, you mean?”