The Futures(55)

Back at the car, I moved toward the passenger side. Michael put his hand on my shoulder.

“Why don’t you take over for a while?” he said. “You ever driven a Maserati?”

This was the old Michael, back again. The Michael whose orders you obeyed without question. He opened the passenger door and climbed in. “Come on, Peck. It’ll be fun. You don’t get to do this every day.”

My knees were shaking again as I walked to the driver’s side. I turned the key in the ignition, and I remembered that my driver’s license had expired. Test-driving a car like this without a license seemed idiotic. I wondered if I should tell Michael. But he interpreted my pause as something else.

“You do know how to drive stick, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Let’s go. Take us back the way we came.”

I’d only driven stick in my parents’ old truck, the one they used when our newer car was in the shop. This was nothing like that. But soon enough, I got the hang of it. All you needed was a light touch. Not to control the car but to meld with it. Feel the acceleration and the curves within your own body. Trust that it was going to be okay. From the corner of my eye, I saw Michael smiling.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, it does.”

“They’re addictive. I have two already. Never get the chance to drive them. Just don’t have the time. But I felt like we needed to celebrate. It’s been a big couple of weeks. Take a right up here. We want to head back to the bridge.”

I nodded.

“So Wanda said you were trying to get an appointment all week. What did you want to talk to me about?”

I was trying to merge onto the southbound Palisades Parkway, glancing over my shoulder for an opening. It was one thing driving the Maserati on the empty streets of Alpine, New Jersey. It was another driving it in thick highway traffic. A single scratch on this car would probably send me into bankruptcy. I hadn’t really been listening. “I’m sorry, Michael. What did you say?”

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Oh.” The steering wheel went slick under my palms. “The, um. I wanted to talk to you about the Las Vegas trip.”

“What about it?”

The traffic was even heavier than it had been an hour earlier, coming out. I could feel the Maserati bucking underneath me, growling at the speed I was forcing it to hold to. Part of me wanted to drop this, move on. But I couldn’t. I had to do it, now or never. I took a deep breath. “Well, when I delivered the papers—”

“Yes, Chan was very happy with them.”

“Well, as I was about to leave, he told me that he wanted to stay in touch with me. Chan’s daughter was there, too, translating for us. She’s applying to colleges in the fall. I think they want my help with it. They know I went to Yale.”

Michael laughed. “Typical. Greedy bastards.”

“I guess I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do. Or what they’re expecting me to do. I don’t have connections like that.”

“Of course you don’t. You can’t buy your way into Harvard or Yale.”

I felt a surge of relief. “Exactly.”

“Listen, Evan. These guys think everything has a price tag. They want more, more, more. We’ve held up our end of the bargain. It’s done. Anything else is icing on the cake, and they’ll have to pay extra for that. So Chan’s daughter will apply next year. By that point, this deal will be wrapped up. There won’t be anything they can do.”

I was processing. “So you want me to—”

“No. Evan. I don’t want you to do anything. I’m not asking you to do anything. Do you understand? You handle this as you see fit. Right?”

A low-riding Camaro swerved in front of me. I slammed on the brakes.

“Jesus,” Michael said. “Be careful.”

I could feel the sweat gathering between my shoulders.

“Listen,” he said. “Evan. You know how to play this game. That’s one of the reasons I hired you. You’ve got the right instincts. You’re sharp. You see things clearly. I don’t have to tell you what to do. You were made to do this kind of work. And there’s no higher compliment than that.”

We drove the rest of the way in silence, down the parkway, back across the George Washington Bridge. I thought about what Michael was saying. The confidence he’d had in me all along. He’d said as much to Brad that night in Las Vegas. Ambitious. A hard worker. Perfect for this project. He had no reason to lie to Brad, no way of knowing I was listening. He was telling the truth that night. Michael really did see something in me. And maybe it was something that I was only just starting to see in myself.

We drove down the West Side Highway, approaching midtown. The sign for West 54th Street loomed in the distance. I signaled and started to move into the left lane.

“No,” Michael said. “Keep going.”

“Isn’t the dealer on Fifty-Fourth Street?”

“You’re going to drop me off downtown first. Take it to West Twelfth Street.”

Michael was back on his BlackBerry, squinting at the screen and responding to e-mails. As we passed the Lincoln Tunnel, his phone rang.

“Babe,” he answered. “Yes. Yes. I’m almost there. Ten minutes, okay?”