‘Yes,’ Billy says. The way Nick keeps asking him if he’s getting it is tiresome, but also good. Nick still thinks he’s talking to a fellow whose brains are permanently on the dimmer switch. Destroy the Billy Summers phone, destroy the David Lockridge phone, destroy any burner phones he may have picked up along the way, roger that. The phone he’ll keep is the one Nick doesn’t know about.
‘We’ll talk down the line,’ Nick says. ‘Keep your phone for awhile if you want, but trash the text I sent you.’ And he’s gone.
Billy deletes the text, lies down, and is asleep in less than a minute.
3
It’s a cool weekend. Fall, it seems, is finally arriving. Billy can see the first few dashes of color in the trees on Evergreen Street. There’s Monopoly on Sunday afternoon, Billy playing against three kids with half a dozen more kibitzing around the board. The dice are usually his friend but not today. He rolls three doubles and winds up in jail on three consecutive turns, a statistical freak almost up there with picking all six Mega Millions numbers. He hangs in long enough for two of his opponents to go broke and then loses to Derek Ackerman. When the bank has taken his last mortgaged property, the kids all crow and pig-pile him, chanting loser-loser-vodka-boozer. Corrie comes downstairs to see what all the ruckus is about and yells through her laughter to get off him, let the man breathe.
‘You got smoked!’ Danny Fazio shouts gleefully. ‘You got smoked by a kid!’
‘I did,’ Billy says, laughing himself. ‘If I’d gotten all of the railroads instead of going to jail—’
Shan’s friend Becky blows a raspberry at him and they all laugh some more. Then they go upstairs and eat pie in the living room, where Jamal is watching a baseball playoff game. Shan sits next to Billy on the couch, holding her flamingo in her lap. In the seventh inning, she goes to sleep with her head resting on Billy’s arm. Corrie asks him to stay for supper, but Billy declines, saying he might catch an early movie. He’s been hankering to see Deadly Express.
‘I saw the previews for that one,’ Derek says. ‘It looks scary.’
‘I eat lots of popcorn,’ Billy says. ‘It keeps me from being scared.’
Billy doesn’t go to the movie but listens to a podcast review of it as he drives across town to the parking garage where his Ford Fusion awaits. Always safe, never sorry. He drives the Fusion to 658 Pearson Street and stows his Dalton Smith gear in the closet. Then he goes upstairs and waters Bev Jensen’s spider plant and Busy Lizzie. The spider plant is going great guns, but the Busy Lizzie looks pretty wilted.
‘There you go, Daphne,’ Billy says. The little sign in front of the Busy Lizzie so identifies her. The spider plant is named – who knows why – Walter.
Billy locks up and leaves the house, wearing a gimme cap to cover his non-blond hair. Also sunglasses, although it’s now almost dark. He returns the Fusion, drives his Toyota back to Midwood, watches some TV, goes to bed. He falls asleep almost immediately.
4
On Monday afternoon there’s a knock on his door. Billy opens it with a sinking heart, expecting Ken Hoff, but it’s not Hoff. It’s Phyllis Stanhope. She’s smiling, but her eyes are red and puffy.
‘Take a girl to dinner?’ Just like that. ‘My boyfriend dumped me, and I need some cheering up.’ She pauses, then adds: ‘My treat.’
‘No need of that,’ Billy says. He has an idea where this might lead, and it’s maybe not such a good idea, but he doesn’t care. ‘Happy to pick up the tab, and if you really don’t like that, we can go dutch again.’
But they don’t go dutch. Billy pays. He thinks she may have decided to celebrate the end of her affair by sleeping with him, and the three screwdrivers she downs – two before dinner and one during – only cement the idea. Billy offers her the wine list but she waves it away.
‘Never mix, never worry,’ she says. ‘That’s from—’
‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ Billy finishes, and she laughs.
She doesn’t eat much of her dinner, says it was kind of a nasty breakup scene, part one in person and part two on the phone, and she’s just not that hungry. What she really wants are those drinks. They may not be going dutch, but she needs some dutch courage for what comes next, which now seems not just possible but inevitable. And he wants it. It’s been a long time since he’s been with a woman. As Billy pays the check with one of his David Lockridge credit cards, he thinks of the kids piling on him and chanting loser-loser-vodka-boozer. And here, only a day later, is that very vodka boozer, a loser in love.