Cold Springs(7)

Twenty feet out, John saw the dilemma coming—Chadwick standing alone by the cash bar, and beyond him, chatting with the city comptroller, was Hays MacColl, biggest developer on the Peninsula, one of the movers and shakers behind the China Basin waterfront.

John needed to walk past Chadwick, give him a smile and a punch on the shoulder maybe, and go talk to MacColl. Test the new power.

Chadwick was looking forlorn. Goddamn, but put a powdered wig on the guy, and he could be George Washington—that same square jaw, that look of sad dignity. John figured it was some kind of genetic karma that the guy taught American history—like people evolving to look like their dogs. Chadwick was the right height, too—six foot eight. John had never thought of himself as short, until he became friends with Chadwick. Then, by comparison, people had started to call him “the shorter guy.” Soon, he was a little man.

He should walk past.

The Chadwicks had been their friends . . . well shit, Ann and Chadwick since high school. All of them, socially, since Ann hired Chadwick, back in what—'82? The same year Katherine had started kindergarten downstairs.

The friendship had been nothing but trouble ever since. Like business and friends, education and friends didn't mix. You teach their kids, you see how they raise them—it changes your perspective. Like, Katherine. Christ. John hated himself that he'd let Mallory stay at their house, even though it would've hurt Chadwick's and Norma's feelings if he hadn't, sent the message that he didn't trust his daughter with theirs.

So? It was true. Katherine was trouble. John dreaded letting her baby-sit. What he dreaded more, his little Mallory following in her footsteps—being at the same school with Ann, having Chadwick as her teacher someday. That couldn't be healthy. Laurel Heights had good prestige, sure. But it wasn't the only show in town. If he could just get Ann to quit, he could put Mallory in Burke, or Hamlin—someplace safe, ordinary.

It wasn't as if John hadn't done his best to be Chadwick's friend. How many guys would do as much as he had? But Chadwick and Norma were bad for them. And what the hell was that carnivore crack earlier? Shit.

He was primed to walk past Chadwick—f*ck the consequences. What had he been thinking, getting sentimental? It had been his idea that they go out together after the auction tonight, have some drinks, get the old friendship back on track. He hated that maudlin streak in himself. It was a weakness he always had to suppress.

Then Chadwick locked eyes with him, gave him that forlorn smile, that weary but affectionate look John's dad used to give him coming home from the Embarcadero every night, and it was like a window into a world that John had spent his whole life trying to escape. Despite himself, John stopped, leaned against the bar.

“Here's the man,” he said.

“Lost our wives, again.”

“Nah,” John said. “Can't lose mine. She's always on stage.”

Sure enough, there Ann was, applauding and smiling as the auctioneer drove up a bidding war between two families over the beautiful third-grade ceramic whatever-the-f*ck-that-was their kids had made.

Hays MacColl drifted off through the crowd with a young lady in tow, and the moment of opportunity passed.

“Norma?” John asked Chadwick.

“Around somewhere.” Chadwick shook his head. “Thought I could make some sense out of things, John. I thought a few days away . . .”

“Hey, man,” John said. “I'm sorry.”

And he was sorry. Honestly. God knows, he and Ann had their differences. They were as mismatched as Chadwick and Norma. But if John was constant about one thing—it was marriage. He'd seen what divorce did to a man, what it did to his dad when his mom had left them. No. Not for John Zedman. His kid would not grow up like that. It was another kind of mirror John saw in Chadwick—and he didn't like it.

Chadwick passed him the auction program. Three more items—the trip to Barbados, a weekend in Aspen and the kindergarten quilt. John had to be there for that, of course. Mallory had made one of the panels—a picture of a horse, naturally. Always a horse. He had to join the frenzy of bidding to turn a week of kindergarten finger-painting into hard cash.

“You still want to go for drinks after?” Chadwick asked. “Little cold out there.”

John realized he'd been scanning the crowd, probably looking like a dog on a leash in the park, ready to bolt. Chadwick gave him the sad eyes, telling him it was okay to leave. Go ahead. But John saw the apprehension there, too, and he knew that Chadwick—the tall one, the one who could wrap a grown man around a pole—needed him.

Whatever else he was, John was a man of action. He did not spend his time vacillating over what to do. If he made a mistake, he didn't waste time grieving over it.

Without him, Chadwick was a mass of indecision, whether it was about his wife, or his daughter, or their plans tonight to relive their first outing as a foursome, so many years ago, when they'd gotten drunk on Veuve Clicquot and wandered through Pacific Heights, singing “When I'm Sixty-Four” in the dark until the old ladies in the mansions started yelling at them, using words old ladies in mansions weren't supposed to know.

John Zedman wasn't afraid of living.

He imagined taking out his .22, right here in the middle school area, making Chadwick pale with fear.

There's nothing to be afraid of, he would tell Chadwick. Johnny will take care of everything.