vol. 1, 2007
The Kiln
Mary Ann McGuigan
The hollowed out ground floor—like a great black cavity at the base of an otherwise shiny tooth—is a smoldering wreck, and the smell of burnt leather and wood and carpet and draperies and just about everything else that was once the Kennedy Ballroom is acrid and everywhere. It’s nearly midnight, and firemen move in and out of the building. Some take a breather near the curb, their Styrofoam cups marked with ash from blackened fingers. They’re not allowing anyone inside, and none of them can tell Kevin if any of the people scheduled to receive awards were hurt. Kevin knows his story will never land before page six unless they were.
Kevin spots a police sergeant he knows and heads toward him, press pass out. “Cronin,” Kevin says. “How’s it goin?”
“Bad,” says Cronin. “We got eight serious injuries and I haven’t heard back from the hospital yet. There’ll probably be more.” Cronin is a stocky man, wears his cap—now coated with ash—low over his brow, peering out as if the world were an unending parade of suspects.
“Can I go in?”
Cronin looks up at Kevin and shakes his head no. Kevin is a big man, powerful looking despite his perpetual slouch. “They’re not finished combing through everything. It’ll be a long while before anybody gets in.”
Kevin gives him a look. “Who’s anybody?”
“Donnegan, since when are fires your beat?”
“When the ones gettin toasted have a lock on money this big.”
“Yeah, this was a studded crowd all right,” says Cronin. “Two top guys from Goldman Sachs were taken out with their suits singed. I heard they were here for some kind of awards ceremony.”
“Yeah. The Stevies.”
Cronin’s attention moves to a noise across the street, then, satisfied that all is well, he glances again at Kevin. “The what?”
“American Business Awards. Corporate America’s version of the Oscars.”
“Just what they need. Another excuse to blow smoke up each other’s ass. I saw that guy who runs CitySaver here.”
“Foster? You saw Sean Foster here?” Kevin tries to sound casual, but he feels breathless, angry at himself for being taken by surprise. He remembers hearing about Sean’s nomination.
“Yeah. You know him?”
“He’s my cousin.” Kevin tells Cronin. “Where’d you see him? Is he ok?”
“I think so. It was a while ago.”
Kevin’s not sure which bothers him more—having to find out Sean’s been injured or having to talk with him if he isn’t. Sean has been leaving messages on Kevin’s phone for two weeks—short, light-hearted things, like voices from a time when there were lots of chances left. Kevin is convinced that—despite the chaos—life was better when he and Sean were young. At least then he believed in the possibility of change. He doesn’t see much room for that now.
If Sean is still here, Kevin knows there’s no way he can avoid talking with him. Foster is the latest Wall Street wonder, and Kevin can’t take this story back without a quote. He feels for his notebook in his jacket pocket. It’s with him all the time, even when he’s not on assignment. In weak moments, when thoughts meant only for fiction barge in, he gets them down. Sometimes, by the time he returns to the notebook, the trail is cold. Still, the book is crammed with months’ worth of scribbles, words meant to point the way back to a moment, a voice, a scene in his head that he can’t shake off. When they’re ready, they’ll take over—brazen squatters in a life that has no room for them. He swears he’ll stop, nearly every day, and nearly every night the images land on the page: widowed aunts, solid and secretive, holding court with subjects held captive at a Thanksgiving dinner table, deciding who gets cursed, who reprieved; a father, pathetic and threatening, filling a bedroom doorway with misplaced rage, like a phantom that took a wrong turn. The pictures fill his head until there’s barely space enough for real life to find room.
“You look a little out of it, Donnegan?” Cronin says. “Is the smoke getting to you?”
“No. No. I’m fine. Eight hurt you said?” He looks for space in his notebook. There’s only one page left.
“Yeah. Pretty bad,” Cronin says.
“Let’s hope they were hedge fund managers. We can easily do with a few less of those.”
Cronin chuckles. “Well, your cousin broke that mold. Kavanaugh says he got at least sixteen people out.”
“You mean out of the building?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit. He never does anything small scale. You know where he is now?”
“Check out one of those fire trucks,” Cronin says, pointing up the street. “The guys are probably stuffing him with coffee and donuts.”
Kevin spots a group of firemen clustered midway down 45th Street and decides to start there. “Thanks, Cronin,” he says.
He gets only a few steps away when Cronin calls after him, “Oh, yeah. I got a message for you from Skibniewski: He says to tell you it’s n i e w, not n e w.”
“The copy desk screwed up. I’ll make it up to him next time.” Officer Skibniewski had uncovered a brothel in Queens, using illegal aliens to provide services. Donnegan’s story on it in the New York Post made the front page.
“Too late. The scrapbook’s ruined.”
If Kevin could have his way, the next time he has to rely on Skibniewski—or anybody else from NYPD—for a story will be never. Writing stories about crime and corruption was never the business Kevin thought he’d be in. By now, he figured he’d be living off his fiction, maybe teaching little literary wannabes in some college on the side. But his stories stay in the drawer, their characters too real to fool anybody, too authentic to pass as anything but the demons he grew up with.
He gets half a block farther on and sees some firemen gathered by their truck. In among them is a man in a white shirt, torn at the shoulder and dirty, but Kevin doubts that it’s Sean. He’s tall enough, but the bald spot at the back of the man’s head doesn’t match Kevin’s memory of him. When the man turns, though, there’s no mistaking the profile. The chiseled features and the cleft in the chin give him the markings of a haughty son-of-a-bitch. He isn’t. Kevin hasn’t seen his cousin since his father’s funeral more than five years ago. Sean was already a success by then, with two start-up private equity funds that shot through the roof. Losing touch with Sean since then was Kevin’s doing. He stays away from the family. When he’s with them he’s frozen in time, a young man with a future, a winner of the O. Henry short story prize, a writer cursed with promise.
Kevin’s close enough now to hear his cousin’s laugh. The laugh intrigues him, always has. It makes him suspect Sean knows some secret about life that everyone else misses cause they’re looking too hard. The firemen look tired. Sean does too. Kevin shakes off the thought of what they’ve had to look at all night. “Mr. Foster,” Kevin calls when he gets close enough.
Sean turns, spots Kevin. He looks pleased to see him, although all the time Sean’s been spending with politicians these days makes Kevin wonder if the welcome is for real. “Mr. Donnegan,” Sean says, “I almost didn’t recognize you.” Kevin assumes he means the extra pounds he’s put on since working all day and writing fiction till he falls face down on the keyboard at night took the place of having a life. “You look great,” Sean tells him, and Kevin is clueless about whether this is true or not. He doesn’t think about his looks. His hair is a darker blond now, but at least most of it is still there. He doesn’t spend time studying mirrors.
Sean extends his hand. Kevin sees it’s black and bruised, but can’t stop himself from squeezing a little. “Tough night here,” he says. Sean nods, pulls away from the contact, disturbed. The firemen stir, as if to give the two their space, but Sean motions them to stay and begins to introduce his cousin, explaining he’s from the New York Post.
“You’re a little late,” says one of the firemen. “The Daily News was here and gone.”
Kevin would have gotten here sooner if Terry hadn’t insisted he turn his cell phone off at their daughter’s concert. He hates the school concerts: Hours of punishing mediocrity for the privilege of hearing his daughter sit down at last at the keyboard and transport a high school auditorium and everyone in it to a place they don’t have the taste to recognize. At home, her practice sessions can lull him into believing he could be happy in this boxed-in life again, as if a soundtrack could change a movie’s ending. In that moment comes the sweet release from wanting any more than the life the children and Terry offer, a reprieve from the punishing tyranny of his fiction.
“Fine name, Donnegan,” one of the firemen says. “How’d your cousin wind up with a white-bread name like Foster?”
“My aunt married outside the tribe.” In most families, this would be harmless enough, Kevin knows. But for Sean’s father—the bastard Brit, as the Donnegans called him, and not necessarily behind his back—family get-togethers were a move into enemy territory. No matter that Foster’s people had been in America for two generations; the Donnegans—especially Kevin’s father, Liam—believed themselves charged with defending the Irish Republican cause against all stray oppressors this side of the Atlantic. The truth was the Donnegans never liked Foster to begin with, but his ancestry relieved them of having to question why.
Kevin watches his cousin with the men. Sean knows all their names, and already he’s learned enough about some of them to tease a bit. Jeez, Kevin thinks, maybe he should run for mayor. There’s been some talk about a bid. He’s been changing whole neighborhoods with his CitySaver Fund, a private equity deal that invests in businesses in the poorest neighborhoods. The fund was so successful so quickly that he started another, making millions for private investors who can put up the stash it takes to buy in and stay in. The Post christened him the Hood’s Robin Hood. That’s why he was here tonight, to receive the American Business Award for Social Responsibility.
The firemen welcome Sean’s teasing, seem eager to put some small distance between them and the night they’ve just passed. “How did it start?” says Kevin. “Do they know yet?” “Nothing yet,” somebody says. Kevin can see that the question isn’t welcome.
“Did you get any names?” Kevin says to one of the men near him.
“I misplaced my pencil, ” the man tells him. Someone else asks Sean if he ever found that woman’s shoe. “I told Torricelli to send you back in for it, didn’t I?” says a big man sitting on the running board of the truck. His name is Magee. His palms are huge, his neck a tree trunk, and sitting there, one leg extended like an ancient root, he seems to Kevin less like a tired man than a physics lesson, a personification of power at rest. His laugh is like a rumbling underground.
“And I got ’em,” says Sean.
“That’s what I call a hero,” somebody says.
“I had no choice. They were Ferragamos.” The joking reminds Kevin of how his father and his friends behaved when they were together—the guys he served with in Viet Nam. The more Kevin would press them for what really happened during the war, the more they’d joke and tease each other about what seemed like insignificant things—the wet socks, the bad food, his father’s hiccoughing fits. The laughter, the looks that hinted at memories, secrets, made him feel like an intruder. He wanted to prepare himself for what being a man would demand of him. But they kept their answers to themselves, camouflaged in the banter and the drink.
“Your cousin knocked himself out tonight,” someone says to Kevin. “Risked his ass getting people out of the building.”
“Damn,” says Kevin, although he isn’t all that surprised. He’s seen Sean go up against demons worse than fire. Like at that family party when Sean was only thirteen. The whole clan was crammed into Aunt Bridget’s backyard, the women pressed against the fence, dodging the spray from the volleyball game in the pool, the men gathered round the gas grill like worshipers at the consecration. Sean’s parents had separated by then, and word had just gotten out that Ken Foster had been spending a fair amount of quality time with a girl barely old enough to drive—news Sean’s uncles took badly. Liam was determined to settle the score for his sister Moira and when Sean’s father arrived to pick him up, Liam got the payback under way, lobbing epithets over the fence. Foster ignored them. That pissed Kevin’s father off even more, and when he leaped the fence, Sean charged right after him to defend his dad. The grownups—who saw Foster’s predicament as the wages of sin—followed in time, a leisurely peace-making contingent, making their meandering wet way toward the gate. Sean was too small to make a difference. Kevin was bigger, of course, three years older, but he knew there was no stopping Liam Donnegan once he got this way. Still, Kevin charged in to help his cousin. He never forgot the pain in Sean’s face. Sean had heard the accusations his uncle had just made. Yet there he was, climbing up his uncle’s back to protect a man who’d crossed fidelity off his to-do list. Kevin wondered which of their fathers had done his family more damage. Even then, he couldn’t understand why he and Sean didn’t just let the two of them kill each other.
“So you’re the reporter in the family?” one of the firemen says.
“Kevin is the writer in the family,” Sean insists.
The remark irks Kevin. He doesn’t want that brought up—especially not on a night meant to pay homage to Sean Foster and his unmatched success—and he doesn’t want to be drawn into this charade: Let’s pretend we’re all comrades cause we breathed in the same smoke all night, pretend we both matter just as much to this fly trap of a city. Sean must know it’s all bullshit.
“Kevin’s stories win prizes,” Sean goes on, and Kevin wants to hit him. For years after that story was published, his mother wouldn’t speak to him. There was no mistaking where Kevin’s characters came from: the father, a violent drunk; the mother, pretending he isn’t. In a family where partnerships like this are the norm, it’s a lot more palatable to claim your fame by telling people how to invest than by telling the truth. Sean is everybody’s golden boy, living proof that they can’t really be as fucked up as they seem.
“I was surprised to find you here,” Kevin interrupts. “I figured they would have sent the limo by now.” Sean’s expression changes slightly, but he quips something back about the driver getting lost in Queens. The response from the others is subdued, as if they sense something else behind the remark, something outside the moment. Someone hands Kevin a coffee. After a few quick gulps, he starts at Sean again. He wants to know how Sean decided which guests to help out of the building. “Did you rank them by income level or just pick the ones with the best connections?” Kevin feels animated, almost high. He wants to force the men to see through this convenient camaraderie. Sean’s life isn’t about them. It’s about money, and any good it does for anyone is entirely accidental.
Sean doesn’t take the bait. He directs a comment to someone nearby. But Kevin won’t let up. He wants to know where Sean buys his shirts, whether they’re designed just for him.
Sean pulls at his ruined sleeve, as if to give Kevin a better look. “The truth is, Kevin, it’s a hand-me-down,” he tells him. “Don’t you recognize it?”
The others laugh, and Magee’s eyes grin through the steam of the coffee he holds to his lips. “Well, hand me down the rest of the stuff in your closet,” he says, “and I’ll sell it to pay for the vacation my wife keeps askin for.”
An older fireman named Pitman moves from the sidelines into the circle. He nods to Sean, then takes off his helmet, tosses it near the truck. It lands with a heavy and serious thud. His thick salt-and-pepper hair is plastered to his scalp where the helmet left its impression.
“It’s the truth, a family tradition,” says Sean. “Right, Kevin?”
“Right,” says Kevin. “I’ve still got the drawers me Da’s Da sailed over in from the other side. Stains and all.” The laughter gets louder.
“Probably doesn’t take much to make your type shit your pants,” says Pitman. There’s laughter again but not as raucous this time. Kevin sees the men are braced for something, curious about how he’ll respond to Pitman’s taunts. But Kevin has met this type before, men like his father, easily riled by anyone whose physical abilities are irrelevant to making their way in the world, who put no more at risk than a new idea.
“You’ve got that right, fella,” Sean offers. “We get nervous when the wind changes direction.” Sean looks uneasy. Kevin can see he wants to cool things down. He guesses, rightly, that Sean is wondering how much of his uncle’s temper his cousin has inherited. Kevin laughs to himself, certain that Sean doesn’t want to find out here.
Kevin decides to back off. “Can we talk for a bit?” he says to Sean, motioning toward the bar across the street.
Before Sean can respond, Pitman steps toward Kevin and Magee puts his coffee down and gets to his feet. “So you’re a newspaperman,” Pitman says to Kevin, standing much too close. “You gonna be quotin the rest of us in your story?”
Kevin turns away. “Listen,” he says to Sean. “I know you’re exhausted, but can you give me a few minutes?”
“Oh, I get it,” Pitman says to the others. “This story’s gonna be for the financial pages. He don’t need us guys. He’s got his headline: ‘My Cousin, the Fire-Fightin Fund Manager.’ ”
“That’ll do, Bob,” Magee tells him.
But Pitman won’t let up. “How come I ain’t seen your ass at any other fires? Only the ones that make headlines, right? Maybe the next time we get visited by Al Qaeda, you’ll come by again,” he says. “The reporters love to hear from the rank and file when there’s bad guys around.” He flicks the pass that hangs from Kevin’s lapel, a gesture that brings the big man closer. “You sure you don’t need me to say a few words?”
“I’m sure,” Kevin tells him. “But next time I’m doing a story on assholes in uniform, I’ll track you down.”
“Come by anytime,” says Pitman, “and I’ll rip you a new one.” Before he can think about it, before the rage has even registered, Kevin swings at him, but Pitman must have known it would be coming. He blocks it and pushes Kevin hard, leaving him so unsteady he has to reach for the side of the truck to right himself. Laughter breaks from the others, and Sean puts an arm around his cousin, a gesture intended to calm him down. It doesn’t. The insult has dislodged something in Kevin, shaken loose a resentment so large, so potent that once free, it needs very little to spread to every nerve. Kevin shoves Sean out of the way and connects a punch so solidly to Pitman’s jaw that it lands him into Magee, who’s standing behind. Within seconds Kevin is restrained by men on every side as Magee half carries Pitman over to the truck. “Hey, let go,” Pitman calls, laughing. “We got a live one here.”
“Take your fuckin hands off me,” Kevin yells, struggling to free himself. But no one does. “Let me go,” Kevin shouts, still kicking and thrashing, until one of the men empties a bottle of water over his head. The wet, cold shock of it jerks him back. He can’t understand what’s happening, why this moment, this meeting with Sean is so difficult, why his failures are closing in like prison walls.
“Get hold of yourself,” Sean tells Kevin in a harsh whisper.
“I’m okay, for fuck’s sake. I’m okay,” Kevin says, finally relenting. The men loosen their grip. Kevin puts his fingers through his wet hair, then looks up and spots Cronin coming toward them. Cronin stops to say something to one of the firemen by the truck, nods in response to the reply. When he reaches Kevin, he looks more curious than concerned. “What the hell’s going on over here?”
“Nothin,” says one of the men.
Cronin looks dubious.
“His hair caught on fire,” one of the firemen tells him.
“We got it under control,” says another.
Cronin grins, tells Kevin he’ll catch up with him later, and heads back to the avenue.
“Sorry about this,” Sean says to no one in particular.
“No need,” someone says. “Pitman must have skipped his anger-management class.”
“You must have cut a few of them yourself,” Magee says to Kevin, and bends to pick up his notebook for him. Kevin stares at it, as if he’s having trouble recognizing it. The cover is worn, the binding cracked. The pages are swollen from constant use, from the weight of the words. The sight of the thing makes him sick, as if he’s faced with a bully he knows he can’t run from anymore.
“Ain’t this yours?” Magee says, a bit louder this time, and Kevin takes it from him. He holds it only long enough to test the weight of it and judge how far it will travel, before he flings it toward the building, toward the pile of burnt plaster and ceiling tiles and parts of wall and wood that have fallen under the axes of these brutal nightingales and settled into a twisted pyre of useless, smoldering ash.
One of the men puts his helmet back on. Another tosses a cup away. Sean and Kevin head away from the group toward the curb. A few of the men come to shake Sean’s hand. Others call out their goodbyes.
“This your average day?” Kevin says to his cousin when they’re halfway across the street.
“I try to get out when I can. You can go cross-eyed in front of a Bloomberg terminal all day.”
Kevin laughs.
“You might try getting out more yourself,” Sean says, but Kevin doesn’t understand what he means. “I thought I’d see you at the Christening last month.”
“Oh, you mean Cathy’s kid. Yeah.”
“Your mother was there,” says Sean, but Kevin doesn’t offer any more. Inside the tavern, the bartender nods and they take a table by a window with so many electric signs in it they can barely see the street. It’s almost one o’clock now and the place has a sleepy feel to it, which surprises Kevin for this part of town. The only other patrons are a couple in the corner saying nothing and a man at the bar reading a paper. “They made a big deal out of it. Aunt Deirdre’s first grandchild and all,” Sean says.
Kevin nods.
“Nobody’s seen you for a while.”
“I know,” Kevin says, then studies the bottles behind the bar.
Sean catches the waitress’s attention. He orders a beer and Kevin orders Glenronach. “Straight up?” asks the waitress. Kevin nods. When she leaves them, their eyes meet, but Kevin doesn’t want to look at him.
“What’s up with you?” Sean says. “That fella got to you pretty easily.”
Kevin shrugs. “I’m just edgy tonight.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“That’s what I call it.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d rather have landed that right of yours on my jaw.”
Kevin doesn’t deny it.
“What set you off about the writer stuff? I don’t get it. I tell them you’re a prize winner and you act as if I was calling you a dirty name.”
“Because I’m not a writer,” Kevin says, his tone sharp. “Writers write stuff that matters. I file news stories about things that are never gonna change and that most people wouldn’t give a shit about even if they did.”
“You’ve got a gig with one of the biggest papers in the city. What’s to be upset about?”
“It sucks you dry.”
“So you don’t write any fiction?’
Kevin shrugs.
“So get some other job.”
“Some other job isn’t gonna pay for the mortgage and the private schools and the dog food.”
The waitress brings their drinks and Kevin downs half the single malt in a swallow, but he can still taste the smoke in his mouth.
“You do have some expensive tastes,” Sean says, lifting a finger toward the Glenronach.
“I made some choices. It’s done. This is my life.”
Sean puts his glass down. “You’re full of shit.”
Kevin stares at his cousin, surprised. This is not Sean’s style. He’s a consensus builder, a manipulator. He doesn’t confront.
“You heard me. You’re full of shit. I don’t believe for a second that you’re not writing.”
“What’s the difference? I can’t publish any of it.”
“Why not?”
Kevin doesn’t answer.
“You’re worried about what the family will say?”
Kevin shrugs.
“You think maybe Uncle Pete will send his sons out to every book store in the tri-state area again?”
Kevin laughs. “That was incredible, wasn’t it?”
“The O. Henry collection must have broken all sales records that year. I’m surprised they didn’t give you the prize again the next year.”
Kevin smiles.
“That’s better. You need to see the upside to the family’s little peculiarities.”
“What’s the upside of Aunt Kate having another nervous breakdown?”
“It wasn’t a nervous breakdown; it was an anxiety attack. It just lasted a while. And anyway, I think it could have had something to do cousin John boy walking out the back door of yet another rehab center.”
“By the way, I don’t recall getting any points for leaving all that out of the story.”
Sean laughs. “The stuff about the eviction already put you beyond the pale.”
“Whatever. I don’t want to deal with all that again.”
“So you’ve disowned them?”
“Let’s just say I like the temperature outside a lot better.”
Sean sips his beer. They can hear the couple in the corner whispering hard. The woman’s back is hunched over, urgent. The man looks away from her, puts his drink down on the table with a thud.
“How is Terry doing?” Sean says.
“She’s okay. She does a great job running the show. She’s got an Excel spread sheet posted on the fridge that tells us when, where, and who to pick up and deliver for whichever extracurricular activities are on the agenda that week.”
“You’ve got a million excuses, don’t you, Kevin?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fine. Jump on me. That’ll solve it.”
“I’m not asking you for any solutions.”
“No. You don’t want any.”
Kevin hates Sean when he starts this bootstrap bullshit, this Cinderella insistence that we can make the best of a bad start. “Listen. I don’t need this,” he says.
“So what are you going to do instead? Beat up on old firemen?”
“He was asking for it.”
“Yeah. And so were you.”
“He’s just like my dad. He decides he doesn’t like me cause I think for a living.”
“You don’t like you, Kevin.”
Kevin stands, takes a twenty out of his wallet and tosses it on the table. “Listen. I’m sorry about the pot shots before. I was out of line.” He turns to go.
“Wait a minute. Sit down,” Sean tells him. “Bad enough you don’t answer my calls. The least you can do is spend a few minutes with me.” Kevin feels like the loser in this Monopoly game, the guy about to be washed out on Park Place if the dice fall wrong. He doesn’t want to spend a few minutes with Sean or with anyone else who’s going to pretend there’s an easy answer. He wishes now what he’s wished all his life, that he could have been born without this curse, born happy to drive nails or douse fires or even write news stories about shit that will never change.
“I need your help,” Sean says.
Kevin looks at his cousin, not sure whether to believe him. “Bullshit,” he says.
“Will you sit down and listen?”
Kevin gives him another look, then slides back into the booth.
“You remember somebody named Beth Campbell?” Sean asks Kevin. He doesn’t. “No, no, sorry,” says Sean. “She would have been Beth Miles when you knew her.” Kevin feels something wash over him, a wave of excitement and longing so strong he feels weak from it. “She says she knew you in high school.” Kevin doesn’t answer. “Says you two were in some kind of writing group together? Do you remember her at all? She’s on the tall side, long dark hair?”
Kevin can see her face. The image stirs up a heavy dose of lust, not just for Beth but for the freedom she brought to him, the permission to be himself. “She had this birthmark on the side of her face near her ear,” Kevin says.
“Yeah, that’s her. Except she’s out to here now.” Sean gestures in front of his stomach. “It’s her third. She started her own publishing company, one of these offbeat literary independent things with books that get lots of good reviews and barely enough sales to pay for the paper.” Kevin hadn’t heard about this. “It’s called Full Court Press.” Kevin groans. “They’re over on the West Side, on 53rd. They’ve had one semi-success, a book that’s become a kind of cult thing, about a woman who stumbles into some kind of a faculty scandal at an Ivy League college.”
“Fault Lines?”
“Yeah. That’s it. Anyway, she ran through the seed money her parents gave her and now she’s on the ropes. I’m thinking about backing her.”
“Well, it’s not going to win you any big money. That’s just not the game with independents. But it’s a good loss leader, if that’s what you’re after.”
“No. Really. I have a good feeling about the place. I need somebody to look into it for me. Is she just having bad luck, or is the set up faulty? What are the people in the industry saying about the list she puts out? I don’t follow this stuff. I need someone who can dig in and see what shape it’s really in, somebody who knows what to look for.”
Kevin sees where he’s going now. And for a moment, he indulges himself, pictures Beth’s face across a table, delicious debates about what to trash and what to keep, precious pages offered up for judgment. Is it tripe or the newest new voice in fiction? The dream pulls him out, lifts him beyond the life that’s crashing around him to a weightless place where a day would be something light and malleable, something he wasn’t eager to end. But he feels the glass in his hand, his cousin’s eyes on him. He is here at this table, ripped back to the rocks on the shoreline. “I can’t,” he tells his cousin.
“Yes, you can, Kevin. I’m ready to fund this thing. I think she’s got something good there.”
“Sean, being in publishing is like taking a vow of poverty, except you don’t even get to heaven for it. I can’t step back like that. Not at this point.”
“I need you on this, Kevin. This can work.”
“Sean, I was only with McGraw-Hill for five years. I’m no publisher.”
“You don’t know what you are, for Crissakes. When are you going to knock off the bullshit? If you’re a writer, then be one. And stop belly aching about it.”
Kevin rubs the fatigue from his eyes, rests his chin behind his fists. “What’s the point anyway? How many stories about violent Irish drunks does the world need?”
“Maybe as many as it takes to get it out of your system.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re the one who’s in the way here, Kevin.” Sean looks away, seeing it’s pointless to go on. The rest comes out like a recording, like words he knows won’t really be heard for years. “You’re ashamed of who you are, the people you come from.”
Kevin denies this, to insist that Sean doesn’t understand. How can he? His success has come so easily, like insulation. But the words sound to Kevin like something he’s committed to memory, a doctrine he’s learned not to question. They trail off, leaving them unable to look at each other.
The bulb in one of the neon signs in the window buzzes above their heads. Sean stands but Kevin doesn’t look at him. From the wallet in his back pocket, Sean takes out his business card. “You’re exactly where you want to be, Kevin. That’s where you are.” He tosses the card on the table. It lands leaning against the empty glass. “If that ever changes, call me.”
Kevin doesn’t answer. He lets Sean walk away, listens to the sharp even footsteps follow the narrow path along the bar to the door. He sits, tracing the lip of his glass, feeling his stomach tighten. He should go after him. This is something good. Why can’t he let it happen? His eyes, unfocused, settle on the maze of dots in the table’s marble top, merging, moving, like stars beckoning him into a crowded night sky. It’s as if the world is falling away, his assumptions dissolving. He shakes lose from the stare and sees his hand on the glass. His knuckles are still raw from the blow, but his anger has no energy. It’s like a weight, like a suit of mail. He looks over his shoulder toward the door, remembering something. But it’s not Sean he wants, net yet.
He’s up quickly and into the street. The smell of smoke outside encroaches, inescapable, like a bad memory. He moves across the street, trying to remember where they were standing. But the truck blocks his view. He crosses to the other side, hurries to the pile, the place he thinks the notebook landed, but he can’t find it. He turns to look toward the truck. The men are inside the building or gone, all except one. Pitman sits on the sideboard, turning pages. Kevin can’t see what’s in his hand, but he knows without question that it’s the notebook. The site makes his skin burn. He feels exposed, in danger even, like a preacher whose prayer book’s been found by a heathen. He wants to turn away, admit defeat finally. He’s too tired to settle this. But Pitman calls to him. “You lose something?” he says, and his voice is so flat that Kevin can’t tell whether it’s a question or a dare.
“Yeah,” says Kevin.
“I think this is it,” says Pitman. He holds the notebook in the air by a corner and lets it bend back and forth like a teetering high wire act about to fall.
Kevin doesn’t answer. He doesn’t want things to start up again. He’s not afraid of the man. He’s just too tired. He’s empty now, floating. He forces himself a few steps closer to Pitman.
“I guess I should apologize,” says Pitman.
The words surprise Kevin. “Forget about it. I was out of line.”
“I’m not talking about that. You don’t get no apologies for that. You’re a fuckin maniac. They shoulda let me have at ya.”
Kevin is puzzled.
“I’m talking about your notebook. I’ve been poking around in your notebook here.”
“Oh,” Kevin says. He wants to tell him it’s all right, but it isn’t.
“This is some kind of a story ain’t it?” he says, pointing to a page. “Or it’s gonna be, right?”
“It could be, yeah. If it ever gets written.”
“This kind of thing amazes me, how people’s minds work.” Pitman beckons him closer. “That’s what you’re doing here. Trying to figure out why these people do what they do, right?”
Kevin nods.
“Like this here, these questions: ‘Does she know her husband was cheating all along? Or will she learn it later? Does she stay knowing he’s cheating?’ ”
Kevin nods.
Pitman shifts his weight, motions for Kevin to sit beside him. Kevin settles in, feels dwarfed by the size of the truck and all the equipment. He laughs at himself for wondering what it would be like to ride up front. “I think about stuff like that,” says Pitman. “A lot. I mean about what got people to the point they’re at. What went wrong.”
“Yeah,” says Kevin. “Me too. And what it would take for things to turn out differently.”
“You can go crazy trying to figure people out. Hell, half the time I can’t figure myself out.”
Pitman sounds tired. Kevin wonders why he isn’t with the other men, but the wrinkles, the gray hair remind him that he probably has proven himself many times over, earned the right to rest while the young ones finish up. The street is very quiet, the gawkers gone. The smell of smoke is strong here, and particles of soot come toward them on the breeze. A piece of drapery wafts from a broken window. Pitman sighs, but not sadly. He seems accustomed to ruin. In the distance, a siren pushes through the silence, insisting life move on.
Pitman elbows Kevin’s side, as if coaxing him to share a confidence. “The daughter lets her father walk in front of a truck?”
Kevin nods.
“Shit.”
“I don’t know if it’s believable,” Kevin says.
“It ain’t like he didn’t have it comin. Sounds like a real bastard.”
“But still.”
“I know.”
Pitman reaches for a bottle of water, holds it up to see if Kevin wants any. He shakes his head no. Pitman unscrews the cap, takes a last half-hearted slug, and tosses it back into the box. Pitman closes the notebook, holds it in both hands. “Sometimes I wonder what my kids think about me, how they really feel. I give ’em a hard time sometimes,” he says. His voice changes to a whisper, “ . . . and their mom.” Kevin doesn’t need to ask what he’s done. It’s in the way he moves; it’s in his face, creased with suspicion. He must punish the world before it discovers who’s really to blame. Pitman’s hands tighten around the notebook, and for a second Kevin is afraid he won’t get it back, that he’ll have to start all over without help, without a plan.
Pitman taps the notebook against his palm. “You got some good shit here. Real people.”
“Thank you,” Kevin says. The words are like a balm, like a sanction. “Thanks for saying that.”
“You want this back, right?” Pitman says, holding the notebook out to him. “I mean I found it all the way over there.”
Kevin nods and takes the notebook. It’s dirty but not damaged. He takes out his handkerchief to wipe it off then tucks it back inside his jacket. The familiar weight of it against his chest comforts him.
“How do you think up that shit?”
Kevin laughs, a long hard chuckle that starts slow and winds up shaking him so hard his eyes tear and the look of the wet sidewalk makes it seem like they’ve fallen into an Impressionist’s canvas.
“What’s so funny?”
“I just pay real close attention.”
MARY ANN MCGUIGAN is the author of two novels for young adults, Cloud Dancer (Scribner's Sons) and Where You Belong (Atheneum), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her third novel, Morning in a Different Place, is also for young adults and will be published in 2009 by Front Street Press. Mary Ann also writes short fiction for adults and is publisher for Bloomberg Press in New York.