He took a long drag on the joint. “How’s it going with the Stagehands?”
“Slow. It’ll pick up in the spring.”
Timmy said, “I need to get back on the list.” He didn’t say, I’m a forty-year-old man without a bank account. I do not exist in the world.
“The list,” Sean Barry repeated. “What for?”
“You don’t need to know what for.”
“This is how you ask a favor.” Sean Barry reached for the joint.
“My kid is coming. Not to visit. He’s coming to live with me.” Timmy said it just to say it, to hear it in his own voice.
Sean Barry looked flabbergasted. “Does Tess know?”
“Of course she knows.” In that moment it seemed entirely true. “She doesn’t know, it’s an Amber Alert.”
Again the eyebrow. “And she’s happy about this?”
Well, no. Tess wasn’t happy. It wasn’t, in general, a word you’d associate with Tess.
“She’s fine with it,” said Timmy. “She’s fine, I’m fine, everybody’s fine. I am fuckin thrilled, you want to know the truth. He lives with me, and I’m done giving her money every month. I never have to deal with her again.”
“There’s that.” Sean Barry nodded gravely. He had two ex-wives of his own. “You can’t put a price tag on that.”
They drank in silence.
“So what about this?” said Sean Barry, gesturing with the joint. “What do you do about this, with a child in the house?”
“He’s fourteen,” said Timmy.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I don’t know what it means.” It was a question he had never confronted. The Tuna had visited Boston only once, nine years ago. Back then he was too young to notice the skunk smell of Timmy’s apartment, the all-day parade of visitors coming and going. Now that he was older, their visits took place in Florida. Twice a year, Timmy got a motel room in Pensacola. They spent a week playing video games, fishing and body-surfing and lying on the beach.
They passed the joint in silence. Timmy inhaled deeply, an alternate vision of his life coalescing in his head. The kid would come to live with him, finish high school in Boston. Together they would run the Laundromat, a family business the Tuna would eventually inherit. In this way, Timmy would give his son a decent start in life. His own parents hadn’t given him squat.
“Forget the list. The list is a nonstarter. The list, I will tell you now, is not going to happen.” Sean Barry squashed out the joint in the ashtray. “You need cash? Here’s my advice. Sell the Cuda.”
The car was a sore subject. Timmy had spent more on it than he’d intended: the rebuilt engine, bodywork, a new paint job. He garaged it, also on the barter system, at his buddy Andy Stasko’s—for free, but not really. It was depressing to think what the Cuda had cost him in time, money, and weed.
He said, “I’m not going to sell the Cuda.”
Sean Barry looked disgusted. “Jesus Christ and his mother! Was that not the whole goddamn point? An investment, you said.”
“It was,” Timmy admitted. “Now, I don’t know.” There was more he could have said. In thirteen months, when the Tuna got his license, the Cuda would be the coolest birthday present in history. It would make up for a lifetime’s worth of fuckups, the best gift any father ever gave his son.
10
Jesus Christ, not another storm.
Five nor’easters in five weeks. It was like living in wartime. Weather alerts were updated twice an hour. Public utilities sent stern warnings via text message: Storm preparedness is a civic responsibility. The homeless were urged to seek shelter indoors.