“Thanks, pal.”
“Come on, I’m kidding. You’re just out of shape.”
“It’s only a matter of time now.”
“It’s only a matter of time for us all, Tallulah. There’s nothing wrong with you a little more exercise and a better diet wouldn’t cure.”
“Thank you and fuck you,” Rich panted.
Rich and Marty played racquetball every Thursday evening, seven to eight, at the Delaware Avenue Y, a short walk from Marty’s downtown office. But racquetball with Marty was the only exercise Rich got. Marty played racquetball with at least four other guys at the Y, played basketball Sundays in a fifty-plus league, and used the stairclimber and elliptical cross-trainer, sweating it out next to the buff women, chatting up any that didn’t wear iPods.
They had known each other for nearly forty years- though both would probably reel at the thought-meeting in high school and staying friends through college, marriages, children and careers. Well, Marty’s career anyway. Rich wasn’t sure the dogged yet unfulfilling path he had pursued since earning his journalism degree could properly be called a career. Rich and Marty had discovered rock music together in the early sixties, when the potent Buffalo scene was presided over by legendary DJs like Tom James and George Brand, a generation of mesmerized teens following them like rats after plugged-in pipers. Rich and Marty formed their own group in high school-Contraband- with Marty on guitar and vocals and Rich on keyboards, trying to work his long-ignored classical piano training into some sort of blues-based attack. They discovered drugs together, beginning with pot, for which a lifelong affinity would develop, as well as acid, the latter experiment ending abruptly, and almost fatally, when the boys discovered that tripping on blotter was fundamentally incompatible with swimming in the Buffalo River. They had gone on road trips to Manhattan together, spiralling through the Adirondacks in the dark with Dylan’s new electric sound blasting out the speakers and thick smoke trailing out the window. They had tried dealing dope briefly. Extremely briefly, it turned out, as the first toes they stepped on belonged to big, hairy-assed motherfuckers who could rip out their throats with one hand. And those were just the girlfriends.
Asked who his best friend was, Rich would say Marty without hesitation. But he wasn’t sure Marty would say the same. He knew Marty had a lot more friends than he did, a lot more going on in his life, and felt sometimes that Marty looked at him more as a sidekick than an equal. He had to admit Marty was the more accomplished of the two: he hadn’t worked any harder than Rich had in school, but did well enough to get into law school. Back then, Marty’s intention (at least his stated intention) was to practise storefront law, help the underprivileged stick it to the man. Now billboards and bus-stop ads hawked his firm’s personal injury services. Helping people stick it to the man’s insurance company was more like it.
Rich took pride in the fact that he earned his living by writing, even if most of the work was corporate and catalogue copy, and the odd ghost-writing job for local luminaries who thought their lives worth documenting. He did well enough to keep his first and only wife, Leora, and daughter Leigh-Anne in a detached brick house south of East Ferry, but had never kept pace financially with Marty. Rich drove a sensible car that got good mileage, an Acura he’d found in the News, three years old with barely thirty thousand miles on the clock. The Leckies took car trips to visit family and the occasional all-inclusive at a beach resort, thanks mainly to his father-in-law, who was determined that his daughter and granddaughter should have a decent vacation whether or not Rich could provide one.
Marty had a sprawling home east of the Delaware Park golf course, where he lived with his three kids from the first marriage and a foxy second wife half his age. Marty had three imports just for himself (a sleek Jag sedan, a two-seater Benz convertible and an Accord he used strictly for lousy driving conditions or parking in dicey parts of town). The fox had a top-of-the-line minivan for ferrying the kids and a Miata for her downtime. Marty was always leaving for or coming back from some killer holiday. Now that he was managing partner, he let the young associates put in the hours, or made them do it if letting them didn’t do the trick. Just a few weeks earlier, Marty had flown the fox out to San Diego to watch the Buick Invitational, Tiger Woods’s favourite tournament. A few weeks before that it had been a two-week cruise in the Caribbean, with a nanny to run after the kids while he rubbed sunscreen into the fox’s haunches, all while Buffalo was digging out of four-foot lake-effect drifts.
Both men would turn fifty-five this year but only Rich looked it. He had lost his hair early and what little there was left around the ears was grey and coarse. He was five-seven and thirty pounds overweight (forty if you believed Leora). The extra weight made his face look pouchy and he couldn’t wear jeans anymore without looking like a tourist or a narc.
Marty, on the other hand, probably didn’t weigh ten pounds more than he had in high school, right around six feet and one-eighty stripped. He’d be shiny with sweat after a game but not drenched like Rich, who looked like a mouldy gourd left out in the rain. Marty’s arms and legs were toned and his pecs hadn’t turned into tits. And if he had ever lost one lustrous hair from his head, two had probably grown in its place.
“I need fluids,” Rich said.
Marty handed him a water bottle.
“There beer in that?”
“No.”
“I can wait.”
There was a knock on the glass door to their court and they looked out to see a young couple holding racquets. They wore expensive-looking outfits with matching headbands and wristbands. Marty looked at his watch, saw their time was up and waved the couple in. He and Rich collected their gear and headed to the showers.
They stood under their showerheads a long while, Rich rolling his shoulders forward and back under the hot water to loosen his muscles. Marty, damn him, had to tend to his hair like it was school picture day, washing it, rinsing it, rubbing in conditioner that smelled like coconut, rinsing it again.
When they were done they sat on a narrow pine bench in front of their lockers. Rich laid a clubhouse towel under his feet while he dressed-God knew what crawled around the carpets in this place-and used another to dry himself.
“So where to?” Marty asked.
“I was thinking the Drift.”
“Really?”
“Why really?”
“Nah, it’s just-well, they don’t have much of a single malt list.”
Christ. Marty could be a jerk sometimes. Worrying about single malts while Rich had to count his beers to keep expenses down. “Olmsted’s has a better whisky selection,” he admitted. “But their food’s not worth the price.”
“And the Drift’s is? They deep-fry everything. Even the menus, I think. Aren’t you watching your cholesterol?”
“I get it checked every year.”
“And?”
“And it’s always high.”
“Your doctor put you on anything?”
“No.”
“Why not? Murray Lightman’s cholesterol was through the roof last year. He takes Contrex now and eats whatever he wants.”
“Can we just get a beer, please? Believe me, I need beer more than Contrex.”
“Joke all you want, but go see your doctor. Or mine, if you want. I’ll get you in to see him.”
“Marty, please. Drop it already!”
“Okay, okay. Fine. Sue me for caring.”
The irony was, Rich’s doctor had written a goddamn prescription. He just hadn’t filled it, not at six bucks a pill every day for the rest of his life.
“What the hell,” Marty said. “Let’s make it the Drift. You did pretty well there last time, I recall.”
“Oh, please.”
“She liked you, Rich. What was her name?”
“Holly.”
“Holly, right. Great name. Great gal. I still don’t understand why you never called her. She was bright, she
