I could hear him roll over on his side so he could look at me.
—You’d get a table at Leonello’s?
I laughed.
—No, Woolly. I’d open my own Leonello’s. A little Italian place with red leather booths and Sinatra on the box. A place where there are no menus and every table is spoken for. In the booth by the kitchen, I’d have a little dinner and take some calls. Then around eight, after a double espresso, I’d go from table to table greeting the customers and telling the bartender to send them another round of drinks—on the house.
I could tell that Woolly liked my idea almost as much as he liked Billy’s, because after he rolled on his back he was smiling at the ceiling, imagining what the whole scene would look like almost as clearly as I could. Maybe even more so.
Tomorrow, I thought, I’ll get him to draw me a floor plan.
—Where would it be? he asked after a moment.
—I don’t know yet, Woolly. But once I’ve decided, you’ll be the first to know.
And he smiled at that too.
A few minutes later, he was in Slumberland. I could tell because when his arm slipped off the edge of the bed, he left it hanging there with his fingers grazing the carpet.
Getting up, I returned his arm to his side and covered him with the blanket from the bottom of the bed. Then I filled a glass with water and placed it on the nightstand. Though Woolly’s medicine always left him thirsty in the morning, he never seemed to remember to put a glass of water within reach before drifting off to sleep.
When I had turned off the TV, undressed, and climbed under my own covers, what I found myself wondering was Where would it be?
From the beginning, I had always imagined that when I had my own place it would be in the city—probably down in the Village on MacDougal or Sullivan Street, in one of those little spots around the corner from the jazz clubs and cafés. But maybe I was on the wrong track. Maybe what I should be doing is opening in a state where they don’t have a Leonello’s yet. A state like . . . California.
Sure, I thought. California.
After we had picked up Woolly’s trust and driven back to Nebraska, we wouldn’t even have to get out of the car. It would be just like this morning with Woolly and Billy in the back seat, and me and Emmett up front, only now the arrow on Billy’s compass would be pointed west.
The problem was that I wasn’t so sure about San Francisco.
Don’t get me wrong. Frisco’s a town with plenty of atmosphere—what with the fog drifting along the wharf, and the winos drifting through the Tenderloin, and the giant paper dragons drifting down the streets of Chinatown. That’s why in the movies someone’s always getting murdered there. And yet, despite all its atmosphere, San Francisco didn’t seem to warrant a spot like Leonello’s. It just didn’t have the panache.
But Los Angeles?
The city of Los Angeles has so much panache it could bottle it and sell it overseas. It’s where the movie stars have lived since the beginning of movie stars. More recently, it’s where the boxers and mobsters were setting up shop. Even Sinatra had made the move. And if Ol’ Blue Eyes could trade in the Big Apple for Tinseltown, so could we.
Los Angeles, I thought to myself, where it’s summer all winter long, every waitress is a starlet in the making, and the street names have long since run out of presidents and trees.
Now that’s what I call a fresh start!
But Emmett was right about the kit bag. Making a fresh start isn’t just a matter of having a new address in a new town. It isn’t a matter of having a new job, or a new phone number, or even a new name. A fresh start requires the cleaning of the slate. And that means paying off all that you owe, and collecting all that you’re due.
By letting go of the farm and taking his beating in the public square, Emmett had already balanced his accounts. If we were going to head out west together, then maybe it was time for me to balance mine.
It didn’t take me long to do the math. I’d spent more than enough nights in my bunk at Salina thinking about my unsettled debts, so the big ones rose right to the surface, three of them in all: One I would have to make good on, and two I would have to collect.
Emmett
Emmett and Billy moved quickly through the scrub at the base of the embankment, headed west. It would have been easier going were they to walk on the tracks, but the notion of doing so struck Emmett as reckless even in the moonlight. Stopping, he looked back at Billy, who was doing his best to keep up.
—Are you sure you don’t want me to carry your backpack?