Part 46 (1/2)

'You do that,' she said, and swung back toward the glowing computer screen. For a moment he was stunned, unable to grasp his good fortune. The interview was over.

By the time Pearson left the building it was pouring, but the Ten O'Clock People - now they were the Three O'clock People, of course, but there was no essential difference - were out just the same, huddled together like sheep, doing their thing. Little Miss Red Skirt and the janitor who liked to wear his cap turned around backward were sheltering beneath the same sodden section of the Boston Globe. They looked uncomfortable and damp around the edges, but Pearson envied the janitor just the same. Little Miss Red Skirt wore Giorgio; he had smelled it in the elevator on several occasions. And she made little silky rustling noises when she moved, of course.

What the h.e.l.l are you thinking about? he asked himself sternly, and replied in the same mental breath: Keeping my sanity, thank you very much. Okay by you?

Duke Rhinemann was standing under the awning of the flower shop just around the corner, his shoulders hunched, a cigarette in the corner of his own mouth. Pearson joined him, glanced at his watch, and decided he could wait a little longer. He poked his head forward a little bit just the same, to catch the tang of Rhinemann's cigarette. He did this without being aware of it.

'My boss is one of them,' he told Duke. 'Unless, of course, Douglas Keefer is the sort of monster who likes to cross-dress.'

Rhinemann grinned ferociously and said nothing.

'You said there were three others. Who are the other two?'

'Donald Fine. You probably don't know him - he's in Securities. And Carl Grosbeck.'

'Carl . . . the Chairman of the Board? Jesus!'

'I told you,' Rhinemann said. 'High places are what these guys're all about - Hey, taxi!'

He dashed out from beneath the awning, flagging the maroon-and-white cab he had spotted cruising miraculously empty through the rainy afternoon. It swerved toward them, spraying fans of standing water. Rhinemann dodged agilely, but Pearson's shoes and pantscuffs were soaked. In his current state, it didn't seem terribly important. He opened the door for Rhinemann, who slid in and scooted across the seat. Pearson followed and slammed the door.

'Gallagher's Pub,' Rhinemann said. 'It's directly across from - '

'I know where Gallagher's is,' the driver said, 'but we don't go anywhere until you dispose of the cancer-stick, my friend.' He tapped the sign clipped to the taximeter. SMOKING IS NOT PERMITTED IN THIS LIVERY, it read.

The two men exchanged a glance. Rhinemann lifted his shoulders in the half-embarra.s.sed, half-surly shrug that has been the princ.i.p.al tribal greeting of the Ten O'Clock People since 1990 or so. Then, without a murmur of protest, he pitched his quarter-smoked Winston out into the driving rain.

Pearson began to tell Rhinemann how shocked he had been when the elevator doors had opened and he'd gotten his first good look at the essential Suzanne Holding, but Rhinemann frowned, gave his head a minute shake, and swivelled his thumb toward their driver. 'We'll talk later,' he said.

Pearson subsided into silence, contenting himself with watching the rain-streaked highrises of midtown Boston slip by. He found himself almost exquisitely attuned to the little street-life scenes going on outside the taxicab's smeary window. He was especially interested in the little cl.u.s.ters of Ten O'Clock People he observed standing in front of every business building they pa.s.sed. Where there was shelter, they took it; where there wasn't, they took that, too - simply turned up their collars, hooded their hands protectively over their cigarettes, and smoked anyway. It occurred to Pearson that easily ninety per cent of the posh midtown high-rises they were pa.s.sing were now no-smoking zones, just like the one he and Rhinemann worked in. It occurred to him further (and this thought came with the force of a revelation) that the Ten O'Clock People were not really a new tribe at all but the raggedy-a.s.s remnants of an old one, renegades running before a new broom that intended to sweep their bad old habit clean out the door of American life. Their unifying characteristic was their unwillingness or inability to quit killing themselves; they were junkies in a steadily shrinking twilight zone of acceptability. An exotic social group, he supposed, but not one that was apt to last very long. He guessed that by the year 2020, 2050 at the latest, the Ten O'Clock People would have gone the way of the dodo.

Oh s.h.i.+t, -wait a minute, he thought. We 're just the last of the world's diehard optimists, that's all - most of us don't bother with our seatbelts, either, and we'd love to sit behind home plate at the ballpark if they'd just take down that silly f.u.c.king screen.

'What's so funny, Mr. Pearson?' Rhinemann asked him, and Pearson became aware he was wearing a broad grin.

'Nothing,' Pearson said. 'Nothing important, at least.'

'Okay; just don't freak out on me.'

'Would you consider it a freak-out if I asked you to call me Brandon?'

'I guess not,' Rhinemann said, and appeared to think it over. 'As long as you call me Duke and we don't get down to BeeBee or Buster or anything embarra.s.sing like that.'

'I think you're safe on that score. Want to know something?'

'Sure.'

'This has been the most amazing day of my life.'

Duke Rhinemann nodded without returning Pearson's smile. 'And it's not over yet,' he said.

2.

Pearson thought that Gallagher's had been an inspired choice on Duke's part - a clear Boston anomaly, more Gilley's than Cheers, it was the perfect place for two bank employees to discuss matters which would have left their nearest and dearest with serious questions about their sanity. The longest bar Pearson had ever seen outside of a movie curved around a large square of s.h.i.+ny dance-floor on which three couples were currently dry-humping dreamily as Marty Stuart and Travis Tritt harmonized on 'This'One's Gonna Hurt You.'

In a smaller place the bar proper would have been packed, but the patrons were so well s.p.a.ced along this amazing length of mahogany-paved racetrack that bra.s.s-rail privacy was actually achievable; there was no need for them to search out a booth in the dim nether reaches of the room. Pearson was glad. It would be too easy to imagine one of the batpeople, maybe even a bat-couple, sitting (or roosting) in the next booth and listening intently to their conversation.

Isn't that what they call a bunker mentality, old buddy? he thought. Certainly didn't take you long to get there, did it?

No, he supposed not, but for the time being he didn't care. He was just grateful he would be able to see in all directions while they talked . . . or, he supposed, while Duke talked.

'Bar's okay?' Duke asked, and Pearson nodded.

It looked like one bar, Pearson reflected as he followed Duke beneath the sign which read SMOKING PERMITTED IN THIS SECTION ONLY, but it was really two . . . the way that, back in the fifties, every lunch-counter below the Mason-Dixon had really been two: one for the white folks and one for the black. And now as then, you could see the difference. A Sony almost the size of a cineplex movie screen overlooked the center of the no-smoking section; in the nicotine ghetto there was only an elderly Zenith bolted to the wall (a sign beside it read: FEEL FREE TO ASK FOR CREDIT, WE WILL FEEL FREE TO TELL YOU TO F!!K OFF). The surface of the bar itself was dirtier down here - Pearson thought at first that this must be just his imagination, but a second glance confirmed the dingy look of the wood and the faint overlapping rings that were the Ghosts of Schooners Past. And, of course, there was the sallow, yellowish odor of tobacco smoke. He swore it came puffing up from the barstool when he sat down, like popcorn farts out of an elderly movie-theater seat. The newscaster on their battered, smoke-bleared TV appeared to be dying of zinc poisoning; the same guy playing to the healthy folks farther down the bar looked ready to run the four-forty and then bench-press his weight in blondes.

Welcome to the back of the bus, Pearson thought, looking at his fellow Ten O'Clock People with a species of exasperated amus.e.m.e.nt. Oh well, mustn't complain; in another ten years smokers won't even be allowed on board.

'Cigarette?' Duke asked, perhaps displaying certain rudimentary mind-reading skills.

Pearson glanced at his watch, then accepted the b.u.t.t, along with another light from Duke's faux-cla.s.sy lighter. He drew deep, relis.h.i.+ng the way the smoke slid into his pipes, even relis.h.i.+ng the slight swimming in his head. Of course the habit was dangerous, potentially lethal; how could anything that got you off like this not be? It was the way of the world, that was all.

'What about you?' he asked as Duke slipped his cigarettes back into his pocket.

'I can wait a little longer,' Duke said, smiling. 'I got a couple of puffs before we got in the cab. Also, I have to pay off the extra one I had at lunch.'

'You ration yourself, huh?'

'Yeah. I usually only allow myself one at lunch, but today I had two. You scared the s.h.i.+t out of me, you know.'

'I was pretty scared myself.'

The bartender came over, and Pearson found himself fascinated at the way the man avoided the thin ribbon of smoke rising from his cigarette. I doubt if he even knows he's doing it . . . but if I blew some in his face, I bet he'd come over the top and clean my clock for me.

'Help you gentlemen?'

Duke ordered Sam Adamses without consulting Pearson. When the bartender left to get them, Duke turned back and said, 'Stretch it out. This'd be a bad time to get drunk. Bad time to even get tight.'

Pearson nodded and dropped a five-dollar bill on the counter when the bartender came back with the beers. He took a deep swallow, then dragged on his cigarette. There were people who thought a cigarette never tasted better than it did after a meal, but Pearson disagreed; he believed in his heart that it wasn't an apple that had gotten Eve in trouble but a beer and a cigarette.

'So what'd you use?' Duke asked him. 'The patch? Hypnosis? Good old American willpower? Looking at you, I'd guess it was the patch.'

If it had been Duke's humorous effort at a curve-ball, it didn't work. Pearson had been thinking about smoking a lot this afternoon. 'Yeah, the patch,' he said. 'I wore it for two years, starting just after my daughter was born. I took one look at her through the nursery window and made up my mind to quit the habit. It seemed crazy to go on setting fire to forty or fifty cigarettes a day when I'd just taken on an eighteen-year commitment to a brand-new human being.' With whom I had fallen instantly in love, he could have added, but he had an idea Duke already knew that.

'Not to mention your life-long commitment to your wife.'

'Not to mention my wife,' Pearson agreed.