The game broke up, and he tooled around some more, arriving at Vandervelde’s driveway a few minutes early. The gates were open.
Foot on the brake, he sent Andrea a text. Baby I’m sorry
He couldn’t leave it at that. She expected him to be specific with his apologies. Sorry for what? As he sat there, weighing what to write next, he heard a car coming and glanced up.
A white truck cruised past and went around the bend.
Two memories hit him, like a gut-punch combination.
That morning, the truck on the roadside.
A white truck, following him to his work. The guy with a camera.
Upsetting, at the time. But nothing happened. Nothing ever did.
Prison had carved a paranoid streak into him. He worked not to cater to it. The world is not a threat Andrea liked to say. Sound advice, even if he didn’t think she totally believed it herself.
He tried to recall if the truck he’d seen that morning was white, too. He wasn’t sure.
Not that that would have proved anything. Millions of white trucks. They were the boneless skinless chicken breast of commercial vehicles.
He stayed for a few more minutes, watching the road. The truck didn’t come back.
Six oh four. Somehow he’d managed to make himself late.
Rory Vandervelde met him at the door with drink in hand, a big smile on his rough red face.
“There he is.” He clapped Luke on the shoulder and tilted the tumbler toward the Camaro. “And there she is. The Green Goddess.”
He bounded down the steps to the motor court, ran a caressing hand over the hood. “I got a space all picked out and ready for her. Say the word, I’ll get my checkbook.”
Luke smiled weakly. “Anything’s possible.”
“Don’t be a tease, amigo. Well. To the Batcave.” Vandervelde started for the garage but stopped and slapped his thighs. “Ah, dammit. You know what, come on in for a sec.”
Luke trailed him into the darkened house. The living room picture windows framed the setting sun.
“Friend of mine sent me this whisky,” Vandervelde said. “Japanese. Fantastic stuff.”
“Water’s fine, thanks.”
“You sure? You’re missing out.”
Luke was sure.
Vandervelde brought a second tumbler from the wet bar, and, leaving his own drink on an end table, disappeared down the hall.
Luke wasn’t thirsty. He’d only accepted to be polite. He put his tumbler next to Vandervelde’s and went to the window. The coppered waters of the Bay rose in sudden peaks and melted away like unfinished thoughts.
“I never get tired of it.”
Vandervelde was crossing the foyer, carrying a pair of foot-long Maglites.
He joined Luke at the window and together they took in the view.
“I wouldn’t, either,” Luke said, knowing this to be untrue. He got tired of everything, that was his problem. One of many.
“For you,” Vandervelde said, handing him a flashlight.
Luke grasped it. Its heft stoked a strong scary urge to smash out the window and leap through the frame; flee westward through the hot doused city streets till he collided with the shore. Where he went from there was anybody’s guess.
He said, “Did you get your checkbook?”
He heard these words from outside himself, like an unauthorized third party had spoken.
Vandervelde’s smile got a little wider, a little flatter. No longer your and everybody’s best friend, but the shrewd businessman that he was. “Did you want me to?”
Luke’s pulse was racing, as if he had committed an intractable sin. “Let’s bring her in and see how she looks.”
They had to crank the hangar door by hand. The mechanism was hidden behind a portrait of Frank Sinatra. The spot Vandervelde had picked out was close to the entrance, next to a Ferrari giving six inches of clearance. Luke eased in while Vandervelde called out instructions and waved the flashlights like an aircraft marshaller guiding a 747 to the gate.
They stood before the Camaro in reverential silence.
“I think she looks pretty good,” Vandervelde said.
Luke nodded morosely. The effort involved in moving the car made a sale feel like a done deal, when really he’d only meant to try the idea on. But he couldn’t back out now, he was trapped. He’d acted impulsively. Nothing good ever came of that.
“What’s on your mind, son?”
Vandervelde was looking at him with curiosity. Compassion.
What was on his mind.
The warm, drowsy darkness acted as an intoxicant. The fact that Vandervelde was a virtual stranger helped, too, opening up a confessional space and giving Luke permission to unburden himself, like he’d sat down next to someone friendly on a long train ride. Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop. Their miscarriages, the arguments, the monotony of his job, money — everything coalescing into a single yearning, a fire hotter and more painful than the sum of its parts.
He wanted something else. Something different. Even if different was not better.
He said, “It feels wrong to complain.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Complaining is a human right. If I can do it, you sure can.”
Luke laughed.
“What it sounds like to me,” Rory said, “is you don’t think you’re allowed to be happy.”
Luke said nothing.
“I’ll let you in on a secret. That’s what I used to think. And — okay. I know what it looks like,” Rory said, waving to encompass the cars, the outsized garage, his outsized life. “But you’re seeing me now. For the longest time I thought that by denying myself I was setting myself up for a reward down the line. It doesn’t work that way. You have to live while you’re alive.”
Outside the wind had picked up, howling past the open hangar door. The gaps in the trees were blue-black.
“Offer rescinded,” Rory said. “You still want to sell her to me, six months from now, that’s another thing. Tonight I’m not buying.”
Luke nodded, relieved.
“But.” Rory grinned. The businessman was back. He pointed at the Camaro. “First dibs.”
“All yours.”
“Atta boy. We’ll drink to it.”
Luke didn’t have the heart to turn him down. He’d pretend to take a sip.
There was a bar in the garage, but Rory was dead set on him tasting this killer whisky. Meantime Luke should feel free to look around.
Alone, Luke strolled the display floor, running the flashlight over one treasure after another. He ought to be heading home. It was getting late and he felt pretty talked out. He didn’t want to be rude, though, especially not after the kindness Rory had shown him.
He realized he’d forgotten to ask about the mechanic job.
Five minutes went by, then fifteen. Rory didn’t return. Maybe Luke had misunderstood, and he was supposed to find his way back to the house on his own time. He locked the Camaro — force of habit — and left the garage to head up the path. The wind hissed, showering him with pinecones and needles.
He stepped out of the redwoods.
A white truck sat on the motor court.
Luke got a head rush, his fingers tingled.
He stared at it, then came forward, mesmerized, following the flashlight’s bobbing spot.
The truck was parked by the front steps. Enervated moonlight dyed it a pale blue. Tonneau cover on the bed.
He got closer.
The truck’s cab was unoccupied.
He looked at the house.
The front door was ajar.
He reached for his phone.
The door banged open.
“Don’t fuckin move.”
The man in the doorway was broad as a coffin. He wore a mask and was aiming a rifle at Luke’s chest. Luke couldn’t see past him, into the house, to know what he had done.