The Good Neighbor Read online

  “Sure does,” said Nova. “Real good.”

  They fell into line on the sidewalk, Michael in front, Nova in the middle, and Colt behind. He couldn’t quite bring himself to walk next to his father. It was about a mile to the apartment, and the old man walked slowly, his gait no longer the far-stepping stride that Colt remembered struggling to keep up with, on the

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  rare occasions that they had gone anywhere together. It was all he could do now to avoid stepping on his heels. The prison had given him a new set of clothes—jeans, a blue work shirt, a thin denim jacket, and a black knit cap that sat cockeyed on his head. He walked like someone who kept expecting to bump into a wall. Every hundred paces or so, it seemed, he would pause for a brief instant, almost in disbelief, before he kept going. After the third or fourth time of this, he turned, and with a sheepish smile said:

  “First time in a long while I can walk more than a hundred paces in a straight line.”

  “Why’s that?” Colt asked.

  “That was the size of the exercise yard,” he said.

  ❚ ❚ ❚

  Colt had by now replaced the locks on his door, and he fumbled one-handedly with the keys until Michael took them from him and let them in. Then he closed the door again and locked it, and his father stood in the living room, still clutching the bag to his chest, staring at the floor. Michael disappeared into the bath room and closed the door. A moment later they heard the sound of him urinating. The two of them were left alone for the mo ment.

  “This is where you live, huh?” the old man asked. Colt nodded.

  “Nice place,” said his father. “You married?” “Was,” said Colt. “We’re getting a divorce.” “Oh. Too bad. I woulda liked to meet her.”

  “She doesn’t know you exist,” Colt said matter-of-factly, strug gling out of his jacket. “I told her you were dead.”

  Nova nodded just as matter-of-factly, his expression changing no more than if Colt had informed him it was going to rain to morrow. “Where’s she live?” he asked. “You have any kids?”

  “We bought an old country place out in Pennsylvania not too

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  long ago,” Colt said. “That’s pretty much what started it all, I guess. The divorce, I mean. Didn’t know it was going to happen that way, but there you go. When I look back at it, I can see the whole thing started because of that house. Don’t know why. She’s out there now. Probably stay there.” He swallowed. “And no, we didn’t have any kids. I didn’t want them.”

  His father nodded again. “What do you do, Coltrane? You still go by Coltrane?”

  His father ’s use of his name surprised him. He stuttered for a moment before answering.

  “Yeah, I still go by Coltrane,” he said. “What’d you think, I woulda changed my name?”

  “Wouldn’t of surprised me.”

  Colt pondered this—it was something that had never occurred to him. “I’m in finance.”

  “Oh. Finance,” said Nova, nodding, impressed. “Stock market?” “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” said his father. “Well, you always were good with money.”

  “Someone had to be, in our family,” Colt said. “Our so-called family, I should say.”

  “Yeah,” his father agreed, again with no perceptible change in his expression, or in the sound of his voice. Colt felt he could stand there and throw bombs at him all day and he would just look around blankly and nod. The old man was like a punching bag—he would just keep coming back up for more. Why the hell did I bring him back here? he asked himself, for what he was sure wasn’t going to be the last time. At my age, I’m suddenly looking for a father figure? No. That’s crap. There must be something else. Now his old man was looking around at the living room, at the plush sofa and chairs that had cost nearly six thousand dollars, the empty walls where Francie’s pictures had hung, the giant televi sion in the corner with its DVD player and cable box. “Looks like

  you’ve done well,” he said.

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  “Yeah. I’ve done all right. You want anything? A drink, or something to eat?”

  “Naw,” his father said. “Chow’s usually at six. I don’t get hun gry until then. You kinda get used to being on a schedule like that.”

  “Well, sit down then. If you want.”

  The old man sat down gingerly on the couch and then let him self fall back into it, pure relief on his face. “Ooh,” he said. “Softest thing I’ve sat on in years. Can I sleep on here?”

  “If you want,” Colt said.

  Michael came out of the bathroom. Colt felt in his pocket and came up with a wad of cash.

  “Here,” he said, handing it to him. “Take this and go get us some sandwiches. Maybe some beer. You want a beer?” He ad dressed this to his father, who shook his head.

  “Can’t drink,” he said. “Medication.”

  “Get a six-pack of something good,” he said to Michael. “Right,” said Michael. “What kind of sandwiches?”

  “I don’t care. Smoked meat. You like smoked meat?” He ad dressed this also to his father, still unsure what to call him.

  “Sure,” said his father. “I guess. Been a while. I almost don’t re member if I do or not.”

  “Get some Montreal smoked-meat sandwiches. And some beer.

  And some chips.”

  “What kind of chips?” “I don’t care. Any kind.”

  “All right,” said Michael. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Don’t take too long. I’m hungry,” Colt said. He looked at his watch and saw that it was five-thirty. “You don’t get hungry until six?” he asked his father.

  “Like clockwork,” said Nova.

  “I’ll be back by then,” said Michael. He pocketed the money and let himself out. Colt locked the door again after him. Then he sat down on one of the chairs.

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  They sat for several moments, the only sound that of the city outside. Finally his father said, “Sure was surprised to see you up there.”

  Colt snorted. “Yeah,” he said. “That makes two of us.”

  The old man appeared puzzled. He cocked his head, but didn’t ask for an explanation.

  “I wasn’t really planning on coming, is what I mean,” Colt said. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.”

  “Oh,” said his father. “Spur-of-the-moment.” “Yeah.”

  “I see.” He nodded.

  “You can set that bag down, if you want,” Colt said. “No one’s gonna take it from you.”

  The old man looked down at the bag he held in his arms. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “This stuff. It can all go in the incinerator. It’s just old clothes.”

  “You didn’t have any books or anything?” “Naw. They didn’t let us have much.” “Right.”

  Nova set the bag down at his feet. “You just kinda get used to hanging on to whatever you’ve got in there,” he said. “Even if it isn’t much.”

  “So you’ll be needing some new clothes,” Colt said.

  “I guess I will, at that. Sooner or later. These ones are pretty new. When you’re a guest of the state you get new clothes every year. Kind of a big deal when it happens. Something to look for ward to.”

  The two men sat, not quite looking at each other. Colt began to tap his foot on the floor and then made himself stop.

  “Sure was surprised to see you,” his father said again. “Yeah, well. Like I said. Spur-of-the-moment.”

  “You never came to see me before. Not that I blame you.”

  Colt didn’t reply to this. Idly he picked up the remote and turned the television on to MSNBC, muting it. Instinctively he

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  followed the trail of stock quotes as it raced along the bottom, shaking his head in dismay.

  “Tech stocks are gonna start taking it in the shorts,” he said. “I gotta get outa there.”


  “Stock market,” said Nova. “I never understood much about it.” “The bubble’s too big,” Colt said. “That’s all. Just too big. It’s

  gonna pop soon, and a whole lotta people are gonna be crying.” “You make a lotta money at what you do?”

  Colt was amused by the directness of the question, and for a moment he wondered at the motives behind it—but the old man simply seemed to be curious. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  “Good. I always knew you would.”

  “Yeah, you said that before,” Colt said. “Only thing is, I’m won dering how you possibly could have known that.”

  His father looked at him, and Colt felt for a moment that he was looking into a watery-eyed version of himself, as he might appear in another twenty-five or thirty years. The idea of it gave him a feel ing like vertigo, and he fought the shudder that ran down his spine. “I dunno,” his father said softly. “You were always so self-suffi

  cient.”

  “Yeah, well. I had to be. Otherwise I would have starved to death.”

  Nova shifted on the couch, absently testing the springs with his hands.

  “Ah, Colt,” he said. He shook his head. “You don’t know how many times I wished I could do things differently.”

  “Yeah,” said Colt. “You don’t know how many times I wished that you had.”

  That was out now, at least, and he felt a grim sense of relief, as though he had just lost ten pounds. His father looked down at his feet again and shifted uncomfortably on the couch.

  “I thank you,” he said, “for getting me out of there.”

  “You were gonna be out soon, anyway. It sounded like they were going to let you go no matter what.”

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  “Yeah. Old man like me. They got no reason to keep me in there anymore. I’m past being a danger to anyone, I guess. Just a burden on the state now. I—I just wanted to let you know. I don’t blame you for not coming to see me. Or coming to the trial. Or any of that.”

  “Yeah, well, good,” said Colt. “You wanna know what I blame you for?”

  The old man wouldn’t look up. “Okay,” he said querulously.

  “I had to identify Mom,” Colt said. “Who died in an alley after an overdose. And she was laying there for two weeks. That’s what I blame you for.”

  “Colt, you gotta understand. We were split up. I hadn’t seen her for—I don’t know how long. A few years. I was in Mexico when she died, Coltie. I didn’t even know she was gone. Was—was there a funeral?”

  “Yeah, sort of,” said Colt. “A service. Me and about five other people, one of whom was some kind of priest or something. The other ones I didn’t know. They tried to talk to me but I didn’t want to talk to them. They looked like—junkies, I guess. Losers. I didn’t want anything to do with them.”

  “They couldn’t have been junkies,” said Nova. “Junkies always have better things to do than go to funerals. They must have been someone else.”

  “Well, whoever they were. Old hippie friends of yours. I won dered where you were. What the hell were you doing in Mexico?”

  “Cheap black tar heroin. On the beach.”

  “That the stuff you were trying to smuggle when you got ar rested?”

  His father nodded.

  “Well,” said Colt, “you wanna know what I think? I think it serves you right for being such a stupid asshole.”

  Nova laughed quietly and nodded yet again. It was getting rather maddening, this nodding, thought Colt.

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  “Oh, you think it’s funny?” Colt said. “No, I—”

  “You think it’s funny I had to leave home while I was still in high school because my parents kept stealing my lunch money to get high? Or maybe that I hated my own parents so much that I never wanted to see them again? You think that’s funny?”

  “No, no. I wasn’t laughing because it’s funny.” “Then why?” Colt demanded.

  “Because it’s good,” said Nova. “For you to tell me how it is. Lay it down for me, son. I need to hear it. It’s almost all over for me, anyway. I don’t have a long time left. I kinda thought it was all gonna end for me any day now in prison, and here I am, in a lux ury apartment in the middle of New York City.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “My life sure is full of some strange surprises.”

  “Yeah,” said Colt. “Tell me about it.”

  “Why was it you came and got me, anyway?” Colt ran his hand through his hair and sighed.

  “It’s funny,” he said. “Part of me really doesn’t know. And part of me does. I had this car accident, like I told you. And I think I must have almost died. I—kept having these dreams, but they weren’t dreams. Like I was being . . . judged. I guess. And they were going to read this list of charges against me. Only—I knew they weren’t going to be crimes.”

  His father was nodding as though this was the sort of conver sation he had every day. “Uh-huh,” he said. “What were they, then?”

  “Regrets,” said Colt.

  “Oh. So you got some regrets.”

  “Yeah. And there was something else, too.” Nova looked up at him expectantly.

  “I, uh—I kept hearing your voice in my head,” said Colt. “Kind of like you were watching everything I did, and passing judgment on it. Letting me know whether it was a good thing or a bad

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  thing.” He almost laughed. “It used to drive me crazy. I tried everything to stop it, but nothing worked. Not even loud music, or booze, or anything. It just made it worse. So I thought—I don’t know. I was tired of running from it, I guess. I wanted to see if it was really your voice, or if it was just something I made up. And now—”

  His father was looking at him frankly, curious, interested. “Well?” he said. “Which was it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Colt.

  Shyly his father looked down at his hands.

  “That’s funny,” he said. “I used to pretend I was talking to you.

  In my head, I mean.” “You did?”

  The old man nodded. “I had to keep you alive somehow,” he said. “You were all I had left. Even though I didn’t deserve you. Make no mistake, Coltie. I know I don’t deserve you. I never did. You were an accident, did you know that?”

  Colt closed his eyes and turned his head away, his guts aching. “Well, I guessed that, more or less,” he said.

  “We never planned on having you. I know that’s probably not an easy thing to hear. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this. But I have a reason for wanting you to know. Because later, after you were gone, I realized how lucky I was to have had you at all. By then it was too late. I used to talk to you all the time, and I would pre tend you were listening. I didn’t even know what you looked like anymore. I didn’t even know if I would recognize you when I saw you again. But when I saw you today, I knew it was you right away.”

  Colt was staring at him bemusedly, listening.

  “Sometimes,” his father went on, “I wasn’t even sure that you had ever happened. I wasn’t sure you were real. When you’re locked up long enough it seems like you’ve never been anywhere else, you know?” He shook his head. “No, you wouldn’t know. You’ve never been locked up. But what I mean is—I was hoping

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  you were real. That I didn’t just dream you up. And that we were still connected. Somehow. Even just a little bit. And—I guess maybe—”

  The door opened at that moment, and Michael came back in, bearing two brown paper bags. He set them down on the floor and, after locking the door again, reached into one of them and came up with a sandwich wrapped in white paper. He handed it to Nova Hart, and then handed another to Colt.

  “All they had was smoked turkey,” he said. “Hope that’s all right.”

  Colt waited to see if his father was going to finish what he was saying, but his attention was fully taken up by the sandwich now. H
e watched his father unwrap the paper to reveal a long baguette sliced down the middle, a riot of lettuce and tomatoes and slices of turkey erupting from the sides. Nova picked up a tomato and stared at it like a lover; then he popped it in his mouth and chewed it slowly, closing his eyes in rapture. Obviously he was not going to finish what he was saying until that sandwich was gone. It was probably the best food he’d had in fifteen years, Colt thought. Colt opened his own sandwich, picked it up and took a bite.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Smoked turkey is all right.”

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  Getting Ready

  In the days since her obligatory visit to Colt in the hospital, Fran cie had busied herself with getting Adencourt in order. Not the

  whole house—that task was far too large. Instead, she concen trated on the parts in which she would spend most of her time: the bedroom, the kitchen and living room, and the oak-paneled den, which she had decided to turn into her office. Not office: Colt had an office. She would have a writing room. Of all the rooms in the house, it was the best to work in. The east wall had a large, deep window that looked out over the property. From there she could see the barn, its spine snapped as if under some tremendous weight, and the stunted apple trees, which—if they still blos somed—would fill one corner of her view with white petals, come spring. And she could just see the pile of earth that marked where the cemetery had once been.

  She went to an antique shop in town and purchased a used draftsman’s table, which the owner was kind enough to deliver for her, since it weighed more than she did. Here she could scatter her papers and books at will, when eventually she retrieved them