Later, I say to Syd, “Is that what you thought I was going to do? Freak out?”
“I don’t know,” she says.
“Why’d you send Patty?”
“Well, she offered, first of all. And I kind of thought, okay, because, ever since you and Mom got divorced, well, even before you got divorced, every time there’s anything about money, it’s like, watch out, it’s freak-out time.”
“Syd-”
“And a dented door, that’s going to be a fortune, right? And you’re not going to want to put it through insurance because they’ll put your rates up, and, like, I’d pay for it but I don’t have any money anyway, and you’ll ask Mom for half but she’ll say it’s your car, you let me drive it, you should pay for it all, and you’ll get all pissed, and it’ll be like when you had the dealership and everything was going wrong and every night you and Mom were fighting and she said this was all supposed to give me a better life and it was like if it wasn’t for me you wouldn’t be fighting all the time and-”
The next day I ask Susanne to meet me for lunch.
“Truce,” I say.
“Okay,” she says. And, it turns out, she means it.
TWENTY-SEVEN
AFTER ARNIE LEFT, I called the cell number I had for Patty. First, I wanted to be sure she was okay, that she’d safely gotten home-or someplace-after she’d left my place the night before. She wasn’t answering. Probably saw my number and figured, drop dead, dickwad. I knew I’d been firm with her the night before, but there were probably others who’d accuse me of not being firm enough. Drinking underage, staying up late, not phoning home-there was plenty of material there for a lecture.
I didn’t feel that was my role, though. I’d felt an obligation to make sure Patty was okay, but it wasn’t up to me, certainly not at the moment, to turn her life around.
I had two numbers for Jeff. Home and cell. I called his home.
A woman answered. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Bluestein?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“Tim Blake here.”
“Oh my, hello.”
I’d found that people who might normally ask how you were didn’t where I was concerned. I asked, “Is Jeff there?”
“Not at the moment. Is this about the website?”
“I had a couple of questions for him, technical stuff I really don’t understand.”
“Oh, I don’t get any of it, either. He’s always doing something on the computers, and I haven’t the foggiest notion what it is.”
“I’ve got his cell number. I’ll try that.” I hung up, dialed again.
“Yeah?”
“Jeff, it’s Mr. Blake.”
“Yeah?”
“We need to talk.”
“Yeah? I mean, yeah, sure, I guess. What’s up? Has the site gone down or something?”
“Nothing like that. I just wanted to talk to you about a couple of other things.”
“Sure.”
“What are you doing?”
“Huh?”
“Right now. What are you doing?”
“I’m on the train. Some friends and I decided to go into the city for the day.” By “city,” I guessed he meant Manhattan.
“You’re going into New York?”
“Yeah. Just something to do.”
“When are you coming back?”
“Tonight, I guess,” he said. “We’re going down to SoHo to the Kid Robot store.” I had no idea what that was.
What I wanted to talk to him about I didn’t want to do over the phone. I didn’t know that his Dalrymple’s misadventure had anything to do with Syd, but I wanted to talk to him face-to-face when we went over this. Whatever intimidation skills I possessed might not work that well over the phone.
“Okay, we’ll talk tomorrow,” I said. “For sure.”
“For sure,” Jeff said, but he didn’t sound at all excited.
“YOU WANT TO BUY A CAR FROM ME,” Bob Janigan said that afternoon.
“Consider it my way of making amends,” I said.
The two of us were standing on the lot, pennants flapping overhead.
“It’s not true, by the way,” I said.
“What? You don’t want to buy a car?”
“I’m not trying to drive a wedge between you and Susanne,” I said. “I still care about her. I still love her, but not… the same way. And it’s not my intention to come between the two of you.”
“I think you’re full of shit,” Bob said.
I nodded, gave that a moment, then said, “So, what do you have?”
He pointed to a faded blue Volkswagen New Beetle, about ten years old, one of the first of the retro-designed models off the line. “What about that?”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“No, I’m not joking. It’s got relatively low miles, it’s priced fairly, and it’s pretty good on gas.”
“It’s a birthday car, isn’t it?” I asked.
Bob pretended not to know what I meant by that. It was what people in the business called a car that had been sitting on the lot so long it had been through an entire calendar year. “A birthday car?” he said.
“Come on, Bob,” I said. “I’ve noticed this car sitting here for months. You can’t unload it. There’s a puddle of oil under it, and the two front tires are bald.”
“It’s got tinted windows,” he said. “And there’s a six-pack CD player in the trunk.” He handed me a thick remote key. “Go ahead, start it up.”
I got in, turned the ignition, flipped the lights on, then left the car running while I walked around it.
“Headlight’s out,” I said. “And you hear that knocking sound?”
“It just has to warm up.”
“And you’re expecting to get forty-five hundred for it?” I asked.
“It’s a good deal,” he insisted. “Best deal on the lot.” He added, “In your price range.”
“I’ll give you thirty-eight, you put some decent tires on the front, replace the headlight, find what’s leaking underneath, we got a deal.”
Bob let out a long breath of exasperation. “Bite me, Tim.”
“You should say that on your commercials,” I suggested.
I went back, killed the engine, then pulled up the lever that released the seatback to allow access to the minuscule rear seat. It snapped off in my hand. I held it up for Bob.
“Thirty-nine hundred,” he said.
“You replace the headlight, the bald tires,” I said, tossing the lever onto the floor of the back
