Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7
E lijah. Sunday
Sleep started to catch up to me Sunday afternoon. Everything that was on my mind had screwed up my sleep patterns. I’d started waking up in the middle of the night and not getting back to sleep for an hour or more. It hadn’t affected me at work — yet. But if I had to have a sudden crash, Sunday afternoon when I had nothing going on but watching ESPN on the couch was the time for it to happen.
Somewhere in the midst of the commentators running down scores, players, and game performances, my eyelids got heavy. They fluttered and slid shut. My thoughts dissolved into something else.
I remember seeing Kathleen. Not Kathleen the way she was when we broke up, disappointed in our relationship, unable to accept my past, seeing no future for us, and walking away. It was Kathleen the way she was when we were first together — smiling, laughing, cuddling with me.
We were together on the couch, watching some old movie; she liked old movies. I couldn’t remember what movie it was. All I could recall was Kathleen starting to unbutton my shirt. Kathleen unbuttoning my shirt was the beginning of so many things we’d always loved. I lay still and let her undo what I was wearing, one button at a time…
And that was when the damn buzzer from the front entrance downstairs jarred me from my dream and made me bolt up on the couch, cursing.
Damn it all, who the hell could this be and what were they doing in the lobby of my building, pressing my buzzer now? I wondered. If my dream had continued, Kathleen and I might have pressed some much more pleasing buzzers for each other.
The buzzer kept sounding, and I pulled myself up off the couch with a scowl. Whoever the hell this was, it had better be about something damn good and important. Sunday afternoon, of all times…
I went to my apartment door and hit the intercom. Not particularly caring if I sounded rude after what was just interrupted, I barked, “ What? ”
And there it was: the voice. That voice. My irritation turned to dread at the sound .
He called to me as if there wasn’t a problem in the world. “Hey, Elijah, it’s me! I’m here! Ring me up, buddy!”
My jaw clenched, and my whole body followed it. I looked away from the intercom as if by not looking at it, I could make this moment disappear. But, no such luck. He was here. He was just a few floors below me, in the entrance to my building. Moreover, he knew I was here, and he wasn’t about to go away. I’d never felt so cornered in my life.
Because my hand wasn’t on the intercom switch, he couldn’t hear me when I growled through gritted teeth, “ Damn! Damn, damn, damn! ”
The buzzer sounded again, making me want to tear the intercom out of the wall. I took a breath to calm myself as much as I could (which wasn’t that much), and pressed the button.
“Hey, Kane,” I said, unable to sound excited. “Yeah, come on up.”
I hit the button to unlock the front door of the building and let him enter. In the seconds that followed, my heart raced as I pictured him getting on the elevator to the top floor, where my penthouse was the one and only apartment.
It was like a lightning strike in my chest when I heard the knock at the door. I leaned on the wall with one hand, wanting to put my fist through it. Trying to calm myself wasn’t going to do any good. Instead, I plastered the phoniest smile that I’d ever smiled onto my face and opened the door.
On the other side of the door, grinning that same grin I knew so well and had never wanted to see again, stood Kane Marcus. He looked at me the way you’d look at a brother that you hadn’t seen in far too long. As far as I was concerned, it hadn’t been long enough.
“Hey, buddy, don’t I get a hug?” Kane greeted me, totally clueless about the way I felt. In his little world, his feelings were all there ever really were.
“Sure, Kane,” I said. I hugged him and let him clap me on the back, which made me wish I could clap him on the head with one of my fireplace pokers. He laughed and couldn’t see me grimacing.
Kane grasped my shoulders when we pulled apart, his sickening grin unchanged. “Man, oh man, look at you! Elijah, buddy, you look like a billion dollars! I’m getting that right, aren’t I? It is a billion?”
“You look the same, Kane,” I said, not going into specifics about exactly what I meant by that.
He laughed again. “So, are we gonna stand here in the doorway, or are you gonna let an old buddy in and welcome him back with a drink? I know you can afford the best stuff these days.”
Humoring him, I stood aside and let him enter my home — my sanctuary, my reward for all my hard work to recreate my life. I eyed the pokers at the fireplace as I shut the door. I could afford to hire the best lawyers in Ohio; hell, the best lawyers in the Midwest. Lawyers who could get a jury to believe that I was just temporarily insane from having this plague of a human being come walking back into my life.
Meanwhile, Kane, hands on his hips, admired my place. He looked at the side of the living room taken up with big, tall windows, the polished wood furniture with soft leather upholstery that I knew was making him salivate with all kinds of raunchy thoughts, the brick fireplace, the fully-stocked bar, the 80-inch flatscreen that still had ESPN playing, the modern art on my walls.
He shook his head and made a little clucking sound as if appraising everything he saw in my home. I wouldn’t have put it past him; I guessed he was doing the math from what he could get from a fence after pulling a heist and cleaning me out.
He faced me and said with a crooked grin — the operative word being “crooked” — “Wow, man. This is sweet. Really sweet. You did all right for yourself, didn’t you? I mean, whoo-EE! You are really set up here, aren’t ya?”
He actually crowed at the sight of my living room. The time when trash most makes itself known is when it’s in the presence of class , I thought.
Words failed me. Not only was he the one person in the world that I least wanted to see, but he had shown up when I was least prepared for him. In business, I was always in charge. Right now, I was at a total loss.
Kane must have seen how I felt, and of course, he misinterpreted it. After all, how could I possibly be upset to see him? Putting up his hands, he said, “Don’t you worry, Elijah. I’ve been clean for quite a while now. I’m not here to get you into any kind of trouble. This is just a couple of buddies catching up, right?”
“Right,” I said for want of anything else to say.
“So, how about that drink?” he asked. I directed him to the bar. I could use a stiff drink myself.
We sat at my bar and drank my best Scotch from my best crystal glasses. It was wasted on him, and I was frankly surprised that he didn’t ask me to break open a bottle of my best champagne to toast our reunion. I wouldn’t have minded opening a bottle of champagne, all right. I would have been happy to break it open the way the Queen of England would launch a new ship: right over his head. That, too, would have been a waste, and a mess that I would not have wanted to clean up.
But, there we were at my bar, drinking my best Scotch, and Kane had the nerve to ask for a double. He’d barely gotten in the door and I’d already had twice as much of him as I would ever want.
“Did you ever think we’d be toasting each other’s health in a place like this?” Kane grinned over my high-priced liquor. “This is the kind of thing we always dreamed about, isn’t it? No worries, no wants, all the best of everything. And, we’ve always deserved it, haven’t we, Elijah?”
“This came from hard work, you know, Kane,” I told him, taking a good swallow for the sake of my nerves.
He scoffed. “ Pssshhh… Hard work, hard work. Everybody’s always blabbering on about ‘hard work.’ The world is full of people who work their asses off and never get near anything like this kind of life.” He waved his hand with my expensive Scotch in my expensive crystal as if my penthouse apartment were some kind of kingdom that I ruled. But, I had come to my ‘throne’ honestly, which was more than Kane had ever done or could ever do.
He ranted on, “You know what ‘hard work’ gets most people? A bellyful of grief and just more wanting. Always, always wanting. Always something you know you ought to have, that you’ve got to see someone else with instead. It eats away at you eats your heart right out. That’s ‘hard work,’ Elijah.”
He got up off my barstool, drink in hand, and gazed around my home with the kind of lust a man usually reserves for a beautiful woman.
“Want to know the trouble with ‘hard work,’ Elijah? Hard work wants a payoff. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into something. You go at something and work and work ‘til your ass drops off, you stick your ass back on and you work some more, and what the hell does any of it get you? There’s nothing in the system to make sure hard work gets the results and the payoff you’re looking for. Too many times, hard work leaves you down in the dirt, looking up at the people who got rewarded for it.”
He spun around and raised his glass to me. “Everybody should get the payoff for their hard work that you got, Elijah. But, you were always going places; I always knew that. That’s why I always wanted us to stick together. I knew when one of us made it, they’d pick the other one up. This, Elijah... This is everything we always wanted. And, you went and got it.” He took a hard swallow while my stomach churned. “Good for you, buddy. Damn good for you.”
Kane went over to the windows and stood there, gazing out at the panoramic view. I watched him, thinking one good shove was all it would take to push him through my picture windows and down onto the pavement of that view.
Insanity plea, I thought. Just plead that the sight of a lowlife helping himself to my whiskey and my view drove me mad, pushed me over the edge…
How could I get rid of him? Think, Elijah, think!
I fished my phone from my pocket while Kane gazed out at Cincinnati with his back to me. If I were to set my timer and pretend it was my ringtone when it went off, it was just possible…
Lost in his thoughts of easily-obtained riches, Kane went on, “You’re like the king of Cincinnati, you know that, Elijah? Look at this. It’s like a commanding view of the whole city. We always dreamed about sitting on top of a city like this.
“And, you know? I’ll bet you and me together could do better than Cincinnati. Picture us sitting in front of a view like this, only it’s Chicago. Or L.A. Even New York. What a blast that would be, the two of us taking on Manhattan…”
Like the bell chiming in to save me, my phone timer went off. Kane turned around, eyeing me curiously. “What’s that?”
Pretending to be disappointed, I shut off the timer and pretended to be studying a message on the phone. “Damn. That’s work. There’s an emergency in the…uh…IT department of the company. Looks like a programming problem that’ll need my attention.” I looked over at him, keeping up my little charade. “Damn, of all the times. I’m sorry, Kane.”
“So what?” he reacted. “You’ve got people to take care of this, haven’t you? Programmers, people who do the heavy lifting — let them handle it. That’s why you’re the boss, right?”
Pocketing my phone again, I replied, “I’m the boss because I know when to be hands-on and when to delegate. This is a hands-on thing. There’s a client who’ll want a status report tomorrow. We have to be on top of this, which means I have to be on top of this. I need to go.”
“That sucks, man,” he said, with a last swallow of the Scotch. “I was looking forward to the two of us hanging out today. But, listen, we can still get in some quality time when you’re done with your little emergency, right? How about I just make myself comfortable here ‘til you get back? I could even crash here.”
Just the idea of it made me want to run across the room and make good on that fantasy of shoving him out the window. He’d been pawing at the things in my apartment with his eyes while I watched. I could just see him making free with everything that I owned while I was gone, and I couldn’t bear it. It was time for another lie.
“Uh…no,” I said, shaking my head. “No, that’s a bad idea.”
Coming closer and eyeing the bottles on my bar shelves behind me, Kane wondered, “Why not?”
“Because of…” I scrambled in my head, “Molly.”
Kane stopped in his tracks with a smile that made me queasy. “ Molly? Oh-ho-ho… Molly, huh?”
“Yes, Molly,” I lied. “She’s…asleep in the master bedroom now.”
His smile broadened, and my queasy feeling deepened. “Asleep in the master bedroom? Seriously? You mean to tell me you’ve got a chick in your bed, and you’re fully dressed and out here entertaining me instead of buck naked between the sheets with her? Elijah, what did making all this money do to your head, man? Where are your priorities?”
The conversation was threatening to go to some really raunchy places unless I took charge of the narrative. I lied further, “Molly isn’t a woman. She’s…my dog.”
Kane blinked, the train of his dirty thoughts derailed. Jerking his head back in surprise, he repeated, “Your dog? ”
“Yep,” I said, coming out from behind the bar. “White German Shepherd. Gorgeous dog and really protective. You know how guard dogs are. This place and I are her territory. If she wakes up and comes out here now, she’ll go into protective mode. Leaving you here alone with her is a bad idea. There might be nothing left but torn clothes and blood when I got back. So, you can’t be here by yourself; I’m going to have to see you out.”
“Geez, Elijah, you really have changed since we last saw each other,” said Kane as I took the glass from his hand and set it back on the bar.
“I’m going to have to change to go to the office, Kane, and I don’t even want you out here by yourself while I’m in the bathroom, in case Molly wakes up. Let me see you to the door.” To make it look good for him, I kept glancing over my shoulder in the direction of the bedroom. Meanwhile, I took him by one arm and started to lead him back across the living room.
When we got the door, he said, “It’s too bad we can’t hang out like I wanted. Maybe next time, you can introduce me to Molly. That way, you won’t have to worry about leaving me with her; I can even watch her while you’re gone. In the meantime…do you think you can spot me some cash to get a room for the night?”
I couldn’t believe he actually wanted me to put him up somewhere else, for want of my home. I didn’t know what he was expecting, but I hoped he didn’t think I was going to help him get five-star accommodations or anything. Trying not to frown and tip him off to how disgusted I was, I whipped out my wallet and plucked out a hundred-dollar bill.
I handed him the Benjamin and said, “Here you go. That’ll hold you ‘til the morning.” I glanced back at my dog-free bedroom and said, “Now, you’re really going to have to excuse me. I have to return the message from this programmer and get ready to get out of here.”
Slipping the cash into his pocket, Kane said, “Okay, buddy, and thanks. But once you’ve put out this fire at your company, you and me are gonna do this town up right.”
With a clap on his shoulder to make him think I was looking forward to it as much as he was, I told Kane, “Right, you and me. Thanks for coming over.”
I closed the door behind him and leaned against it, letting out a long sigh of what I feared was only temporary relief. Where do you find a white female German Shepherd guard dog on short notice? I wondered. I needed another glass of that Scotch.
Going to the bar to wash out Kane’s glass and have another drink myself would give Kane plenty of time to get out of the building before I left. After what I’d just been through, I actually did feel like going to the office and working for a while.