friends affectionately called
Seated with his coffee and paper, Mercer tried to read through the day’s fare. The
Harry still snored from the couch. His rattling breathing sounded like the explosive grunts of some large animal. He gave a startled snort, and then he was awake, yawning broadly.
Mercer smiled. “Good morning. How do you feel on the first day of the rest of your life?”
“Jesus Christ,” Harry rasped “What time is it?”
Mercer looked at his watch. “Six-thirty.”
“I liked it better when you and Aggie were together. You never came downstairs until after nine.” Harry immediately recognized his gaffe. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry. That was a rotten thing to say.”
Aggie Johnston had been gone for four months, and Mercer still felt the ache of her absence. She had been in Alaska with him and had gone through even more than he had. The relationship that followed had been rocky even at its best. Though she came from a wealthy family who controlled a multinational oil company, she was an ardent environmentalist, and the attraction she and Mercer shared was not strong enough to overcome their different views of his profession. He had not wanted it to end, but he couldn’t stand the arguments either. All he remembered of the day of their breakup was walking around Washington for nearly ten hours in a total fog, his mind unable to accept what had happened even if the decision had been his.
For the first time in over a decade, since the death of his fiancee, Tory Wilkes, Mercer had let someone into his life only to lose her again. Now, whenever he looked at a woman, he wouldn’t allow himself to feel anything. He lived like a monk, and the pain made it easy to ignore the sexual side of his nature. On the rare occasion an attractive woman entered Tiny’s, the neighborhood bar he and Harry frequented, his conflicting emotions would leave him sullen and withdrawn.
“Don’t worry about it.” Mercer tried to smile.
Harry levered himself up from the couch and took a moment to roll up his pant leg to strap on his prosthetic limb. He’d lost his leg so long ago, his walk to the bar was natural and without any trace of a limp.
Mercer had met Harry the night he moved into the renovated townhouse. He had gone to Tiny’s as a distraction from the monotony of unpacking while Harry seemed to live in the seedy establishment. Harry was more than twice Mercer’s age, but both enjoyed a recluse’s solitude and a bachelor’s aversion to sobriety. They never analyzed the deep friendship that had grown since then, but others who knew them realized that, in each other, they sought the family neither had. Childless, Harry needed to know that there would be someone who remembered him after he was gone. Mercer wanted the stabilizing force that his friend represented, a responsibility and loyalty to someone other than himself. In many ways, one was an older version of the other, yet they complemented as well. Harry acted as a temper to Mercer and Mercer’s vitality reminded the octogenarian what his life had once been. And along the way, they had learned to rely on each other, an act alien to both men. What had started casually had solidified into a bond stronger than any father and son’s, for this was an association of choice.
Mercer made a fresh pot of coffee, one not brewed to his masochistic tastes, while Harry smoked through his first of forty daily cigarettes. Harry was quieter than normal, and Mercer sensed something was bothering him. “You okay?”
“Ah, it’s nothing.” While time may have thinned his frame so that his hands and feet seemed oversized and folds of skin hung from his face, Harry’s voice still grated like a rusty machine tool. “How long have we known each other?”
“Going on seven years now. Why?”
“I made the mistake of watching this news show a couple days ago. They had a segment about aging.”
“Oh shit.”
“Oh shit is right,” Harry replied. “Do you know that statistically I’ve been dead for nearly fifteen years? According to the experts, I have a more dangerous lifestyle than an L.A. gang member. I smoke two packs a day, down a couple bottles of booze a week, and the last time I got any exercise was World War Two.”
Mercer grinned. “Don’t worry about it. You’re the other end of the spectrum, that’s all. You make up for the health-nut Wall Street types who drop dead at forty. When was the last time you were sick?”
“This morning.”
“Hangovers don’t count.”
“Christ, I don’t know. It’s been years.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t know. Death, I guess.”
“You afraid of dying? Who’s not.”
“I guess that’s it. I’m more afraid of living nowadays,” Harry said through the cloud of a fresh cigarette. “Death is starting to sound good to me.”
Mercer looked at him sharply. “Don’t you talk like that, old man.”
Mercer had lost both his parents when he was still a child, and while his grandparents had been wonderful surrogates, they, too, had died while he was a freshmen at Penn State. Death was not unknown to him; he’d seen it in a hundred forms. But to hear Harry talking about it, sounding like he embraced it, was chilling. For Mercer, death was the enemy to be fought at all costs.
“Relax, I’m not dead yet. It just doesn’t sound so bad anymore.” Harry pulled himself from the sullen mood. “Besides, if I go, Tiny will lose his best customer.”
“If you paid your bar tab, maybe.”
“I guess it’s just post-birthday blues,” Harry dismissed easily. “So what are you up to today?”
“Probably start working on my final report to Yukon Coal,” Mercer replied.
“You don’t sound thrilled by the prospect.”
“You have no idea,” Mercer breathed. “This is my second contract since Alaska, and I just can’t make myself interested anymore. I’ve changed and I don’t know why.”
“Yes, you do. You just don’t want to admit it.” Harry eyed Mercer, judging how much honesty his friend needed and guessed correctly that Mercer wanted it all. “You’re lonely. You miss Aggie, but you can’t go back to her. I chose bachelorhood and it’s a lifestyle that suits me, but you’re different. It isn’t for you. I stayed single because I just don’t want to be bothered with the whole thing, but you’re single because you’re scared of women.”
Mercer was surprised by Harry’s statement. It wasn’t at all what he’d expected. “I wasn’t talking about that, but what in the hell do you mean, I’m scared of women?”
“You are. Ever since Tory’s death, you’re afraid of losing someone again, so you keep people, especially women, at a distance. When you let Aggie in and your relationship ended in disaster, you stopped letting yourself feel. You’ve shut yourself off because you’re afraid of being hurt again. Hell, right now I’d say you are more afraid of living than I am.”
“Bullshit,” Mercer said angrily.
“Hit a nerve, didn’t I?”
Mercer said nothing. The pain of Tory’s death was right under the surface. He could feel it now, but deeper than that, he felt anger, anger at himself for not preventing it. He had been there when she was murdered by an IRA gunman and still blamed himself for not stopping it, even if there had been no chance he could.
“Hey, listen, I’m sorry. Maybe that was out of line.”
“No, it really wasn’t. I don’t think I’m afraid of living, but you’re right, I am scared of being hurt.”
“Who isn’t? That’s what it means to be human. Every time you let someone in, you run the risk of pain. I
