Nick was saying, “It’s me, Lily, let me talk to—no, Christ no, not Graciella. Put me through to Brett.” Frankie stared at the tubes of quarters. Each one twenty-five bucks. Was he really so paranoid that he had to check them all? Or maybe he just liked to run his hands through them, like Smaug or Scrooge McDuck.
“Brett!” Nick said. “I need you to give me a ballpark figure.” He looked at Frankie. “What’s the address?” Frankie recited it, and Nick said into the phone, “Right, Norridge. Two-bedroom, basement. Frankie, is the basement finished?”
Frankie shook his head.
“Unfinished. One bath. I’m guessing ‘fair condition.’ Okay. Hurry it up, though.”
Nick put the phone to his chest. To Frankie he said, “When my son first started the business, it was all in binders, but now they can look everything up in computers. My idea. Nick Junior, he didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.”
Frankie thought, So innovative he’s on trial for murder.
Brett came back on the line. Nick listened for a minute, then said, “Ah, both of ’em are on the deed? Okay, still doable. So if we get it for sixty, spend as little as possible on carpets and painting…uh-huh. Right. Usual transfer fees. Got it.”
Nick hung up. “I’ve got some good news and bad news,” he said. “You’ll be able to pay down thirty thousand of your debt. You still owe me twenty, but you get to keep your van and keep working—and keep paying me.”
“You’re taking my house?”
“No, I’m buying your house. And the Toyota. Now here’s the bad news.”
A sound escaped from Frankie’s chest, part squeak, part hiccup. A noise he didn’t know his body could make.
“You’re wife’s on the deed, so we’re going to have to go pick her up.”
“Okay, okay,” Frankie said. He was having trouble breathing. “I can bring her by next week, and we can—”
“No, Frankie. Now.”
“Now? But Monday I can—”
“Monday you can pay me the rest, when your friends come through with all their cash.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “Okay.”
“Why are you looking at the door?”
He was looking for Teddy. For Agent Smalls. For Irene. For anyone to arrive, in the nick of time, to pull his ass from the fire.
THE PRECIPICE
15 Buddy
He stares at the clock, waiting for the lozenges of light to reconfigure and signal the final countdown to the Zap. The LEDs form numbers—1, 1, 5, 9—that quiver with import.
Nothing happens.
What if he’s stuck in this moment? What if his consciousness, rebelling at last of its pendular existence, has decided to come to rest here, in this second, forever? It would not be the moment he would have picked—that would be September 1, 1991, at 11:32 p.m., almost exactly four years ago, as he lay in a hotel bed—but some part of him would be relieved to land anywhere. To not have to keep going, to abandon his preparations for the apocalypse. To stop caring. Because as soon as the clock ticks over into midnight, the Countdown to Nothing begins.
Four days until the anniversary of his mother’s death. Four days until the Zap.
He fights down the panic. He can’t stop caring, so he can’t afford to lose track of the now. There’s so much to do. Yet, and yet, the glowing red lights of the clock refuse to move. Is it still now? The LEDs make him think of electrons and electron holes and suddenly it’s November 14, 1983. He’s fifteen, hiding in a study carrel in the Elmhurst Public Library, reading an article in Scientific American about how light-emitting diodes work. The key step is when an electron is pushed into a gap in an atomic lattice, like one of Frankie’s pinballs dropping into a kickout hole. This sudden plunge releases not bonus points but energy in the form of photons.
He flips a page, smiling to himself. Each drop is a quantum event. So beautiful—
And then he’s back, staring at the clock. Not even the World’s Most Powerful Psychic can know whether any one electron would fall into a particular hole, or ever drop at all. Electronic devices depend instead on statistical likelihood. Many holes, many electrons. Apply sufficient voltage, and enough electrons would almost certainly drop into place, causing the diode to emit light.
Buddy has tried to explain his job to only one person. Her name was Cerise. Is Cerise. I can’t know all the details, but I can spot trends, he says to her. And sometimes I give things a nudge. Cerise doesn’t understand. How can she? How can he make her understand what it’s like to keep track of a trillion pinballs bouncing along an infinite number of paths? Everything depends on sending them into the right lanes, off the right bumpers, at exactly the right time. Is there any metaphor—using electrons or pinballs or roulette balls—sufficient to explain how stressful his job is? “Oh honey,” Cerise says. “You’re getting stressed out now.”
He shakes himself back to 1995, the last few seconds of August.
11:59. There is no second hand on the digital clock. No way to know if 12:00 is coming soon, or ever.
Downstairs, the front door opens, and the sound reassures him that time is still flowing. (Unless—is this a memory of the door opening?) The visitor is Frankie, duffel bag in hand. A castaway, an exile, a refugee from the domestic homeland. Irene is up (she sleeps less than Buddy these days) and asks Frankie what the hell is going on. Frankie mumbles a reply, but it’s okay if Buddy can’t hear all the words right now; later they’ll talk more, and there will be donuts, and coffee despite the fact that it’s so late. Irene will raise her mug and say—
No!
He cannot skip ahead into the future. He has to stay on guard. Here. Now.
He glances back at the clock. A voltage knocks electrons into their graves, and suddenly it’s—
SEPTEMBER
16 Buddy
—and he’s walking downstairs, into the kitchen, where his sister and brother sit at the table, without donuts. Donuts come later. Irene is trying to get Frankie to tell her what happened to him tonight. Frankie is mute, struggling to find the words. Buddy watches them from the shadows for a full minute, his heart full, until Irene notices him.
“Buddy,” she says. “You all right?”
But he’s not all right. Who is? Nobody in this house, that’s for sure. Frankie is staring into nothing, a lost man. Buddy drifts up to the table. Waggles his fingers palm up.
Frankie glances at him, barely seeing him.
“I think you’re blocking the driveway,” Irene says.
Buddy repeats the waggle. Frankie sighs—not a faked sigh, but a deep-down, Delta blues sigh—and reaches into a pocket.
Buddy walks toward the front door, Frankie’s keys jangling, and behind him Irene says to their brother, “Just start with Loretta. Why did she kick you out? Is this about the money you owe?”
“You know about that?” he says in a small voice.
Buddy walks to the driveway, unlocks the back door of the Bumblebee van. He rummages in the dark until he finds the box he’d once pictured himself finding, and then uses a key to slit it open. Inside are the expected four huge canisters of Goji Go! berry juice powder. He twists one open, exposing contents that look black in this light, and then dips a finger inside and puts it to his mouth, Miami Vice–style. It tastes like chalk and cough medicine. He spits several times to get the taste out of his mouth.