Billy, who knows it’s going to be the only time, nods.
‘Friends?’ Phil asks.
He gives her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. ‘To the end.’
It’s still early, but Evergreen Street gets up early. Across the street, Diane Fazio is sitting in a rocker on her front porch. She’s bundled up in a wooly pink housecoat, with a cup of coffee in one hand. Billy opens the passenger door of his Toyota for Phil. As he walks around the back to the driver’s side, Diane gives him a neighborly thumbs-up.
Billy has to smile.
6
When the lunch trucks arrive, Billy goes down for a taco and a Coke. Jim Albright, John Colton, and Harry Stone – The Young Lawyers, like characters in a TV show or a Grisham novel – wave him over and ask him to sit with them, but Billy says he wants to eat at his desk and do a little more work.
Jim raises a finger and recites, ‘No man on his deathbed ever said “I wish I had spent more time in the office.” Oscar Wilde, just before he passed into the great beyond.’
He could tell Jim that Oscar Wilde’s last words are actually reputed to have been Either that wallpaper goes or I do, but he just smiles.
The truth is he doesn’t want to spend time with these guys now that the job is almost here, not because he doesn’t like them but because he does. And Phil seems to have taken the day off. He hopes she’ll take Wednesday and Thursday off too, but that’s probably too much to hope for.
His Dalton phone starts to ring just as he re-enters his office. It’s Don Jensen.
‘Dollen my man! You back?’
‘I am.’
‘How you doon? How’s Daffy and Woller?’
‘All three of us are fine. How are you?’ In the bag is how Don is from the sound of his voice, even though it’s just a little past noon.
‘Man, I’ve never been better.’ Better comes out bear. ‘Bevvie, too. Say hi, Bevvie!’
Distant but perfectly audible because she’s yelling, Beverly says, ‘Hi there, honey-bunny!’ And shrieks with laughter. So she’s been drinking, too. Not exactly in mourning, either of them.
‘Bevvie says hi,’ Don says.
‘Yes, I heard her.’
‘Dollen … buddy …’ He drops his voice. ‘We’re rich.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Lawyer read the will this morning and Bevvie’s mom left her everything. Stocks and bank accounts. Almost two hunnert thousand dollars!’
In the background Bevvie cheers, and Billy can’t help but smile. She may be in mourning again when she sobers up, but right now these two apartment dwellers in one of the city’s not-very-desirable neighborhoods are celebrating, and Billy can’t blame them.
‘That’s great, Don. Really great.’
‘How long you gonna be home this time? That’s why I’m callin, Dollen.’
‘Probably quite awhile. I’ve got a new contract for—’
Don doesn’t wait for him to finish. ‘Good, that’s good. You keep waterin Daffy an Woller, because … you know what?’
‘What?’
‘Guess!’
‘Can’t guess.’
‘Gotta, my computer compadre, gotta!’
‘You’re going to Disneyland.’
Don laughs so loudly that Billy pulls the phone away from his ear with a little wince, but he’s also still smiling. A good thing has happened to decent people, and no matter what his own situation happens to be, he has to like it. He wonders if Zola ever wrote a development similar to this. Probably not, but Dickens, now—
‘Close, Dollen, close. We’re goin on a cruise!’
In the background, Beverly whoops.
‘You gonna be around for a month? Maybe even six weeks? Because—’
At this point, Beverly snatches the phone, and Billy once more has to hold it a couple of inches away to spare his overtaxed eardrum. ‘If you’re not, just let em die! I can afford new ones! A whole greenhouse!’
Billy has time to offer her both condolences and congratulations, then it’s Don again.
‘And when we get back, we’re movin. No more scenic view of that fuckin vacant lot across the street. Not that I’m dissin your apartment, Doll. Iss the one Bevvie always wanted.’
Bev cries, ‘Not anymore!’
Billy says, ‘I’ll water Daphne and Walter, don’t worry about that.’
‘We’ll pay you for it, Mr Computer Geek Plant Sitter! We can afford to!’
‘No need. You’re good neighbors.’