'Oh.'
'Something else. Day I left he ran me out to the airport. I gave him five thousand dollars. Case he's got any emergencies. So when you asked him for twenty-seven hundred—'
'Less than that. I spoke to him Saturday afternoon and that was before I needed the thousand for the Cassidy girl. I don't know what figure I mentioned. Fifteen hundred or two thousand, most likely.'
He shook his head. 'Can you make sense out of this? Because I can't. You call him Saturday and he says I'm not coming back until Monday, but go ahead and lay out the money and you'll get it back from me. That's what he says?'
'Yes.'
'Now why would he do that? I can see him not wanting to part with any of my dough if he thinks I might be opposed to it. And rather than turn you down and look like a hard case he'll just say he doesn't have it to give. But he's essentially okaying the expense at the same time that he's hanging on to the dough. Am I right?'
'Yes.'
'Did you give the impression that you had plenty of cash?'
'No.'
'Because I could see him figuring if you got it then you can lay it out. But otherwise… Matt, I don't like to say it but I got a bad feeling about this.'
'So do I.'
'I think he's using.'
'It sounds like it.'
'He's keeping his distance, he says he'll be over and he doesn't show up, I call him and he's not there.
What does that sound like?'
'I haven't seen him at a meeting in a week and a half. Now we don't always go to the same meetings but —'
'But you expect to run into him now and then.'
'Yes.'
'I give him five grand in case something comes up, and the minute something comes up he says he doesn't have it. What did he spend it on?
Or if he's lying, what's he saving it for? Two questions and one answer, way it looks to me. Jay-You-En-Kay. What else?'
'There could be another explanation.'
'I'm willing to hear it.' He picked up a phone, dialed a number, and stood there holding himself in check while the phone rang. It must have rung ten times before he gave up. 'No answer, but it means nothing.
When he used to hole up with a bottle he would go days without answering his phone. I asked him once why he didn't at least take it off the hook. Then I'd know he was there, he said. He's a devious bastard, my brother.'
'It's the disease.'
'The habit, you mean.'
'We generally call it a disease. I guess it amounts to the same thing.'
'He kicked junk, you know. He was hooked bad and he quit it, but then he got into the booze.'
'So he said.'
'How long was he sober? Over a year.'
'A year and a half.'
'You'd think if you could do it that long you could do it forever.'
'A day is the most anybody can do it.'
'Yeah,' he said impatiently. 'A day at a time. I know all that, I heard all the slogans. When he was first getting sober Petey was here all the time. Francey and I would sit with him and give him coffee and listen to him run off at the mouth. Everything he heard at a meeting he came back and filled our ears with it, but we didn't mind because he was starting to put his life back together again. Then one day he told me how he couldn't hang out with me so much anymore because it could undercut his sobriety. Now he's somewhere with a bag of dope and a bottle of whiskey and what the hell happened to his sobriety?'
'You don't know that, Kenan.'
He turned on me. 'What else, for Christ's sake? What's he doing with five grand, buying lottery tickets?
I never should have given him that much money. It's too much temptation. Whatever happens to him, it's my fault.'
'No,' I said. 'If you gave him a cigar box full of heroin and said
'Watch this for me until I get back,' then it'd be your fault. That's more temptation than anybody should have to handle. But he's been clean and dry for a year and a half and he knows how to be responsible for his own sobriety. If the money made
him nervous he could put it in the bank, or ask somebody in the program to hold it for him. Maybe he went out and maybe he didn't, we don't know yet, but whatever he did you didn't make him do it.'
