Locust Lane(72)

But here’s what all the Wendys didn’t understand. It was too late. Maybe last year, he’d still had a chance. Certainly ten years ago, before everything had turned to shit. He’d always intended to quit. Ever since college, he’d sensed that his relationship to booze was a little too cozy. But he’d also believed he could handle it. He had a system. Nothing during the day, unless it was a wedding and Lily had the keys. Sober days, dry months. And it worked. He’d never been breathalyzed. He’d never got into a fistfight; he’d never been drunk at work. Nobody ever suggested he ease off a bit. What he couldn’t see, however, was that he was laying a foundation. Or rather, eroding one, with drop after drop of ethyl alcohol. He was a cocky fighter shrugging off jab after jab, unaware that his opponent was simply measuring him up for the thundering left hook that would knock him permanently on his ass.

That blow, of course, had been his daughter’s reckoning in the McDonald’s stall, which he always pictured to be squalid, shit-streaked, and graffiti-scarred, though it could just as easily have been spotlessly clean. In the aftermath of her death, Patrick took a solemn pledge never to drink again. A return to his old ways was unthinkable. Which turned out to be true, although not how he intended. Three days after that terrible visitation, he took a long swallow from a bottle of Grey Goose that he didn’t stop hitting until he’d fallen into what nobody could quite bring themselves to call a coma. The floodgates had opened. The elaborate system of checks and balances finally gave way. Grim milestones were passed. His first had been getting drunk on a workday—at Papillon, of all places, Michel Mahoun himself pouring him the last of a bottle of outstanding burgundy.

“Some days you drink wine,” the man said with Levantine conviviality.

First fender bender. First bottle stowed away in his office. First blackout. First ultimatum from his wife. First divorce from same. First bedwetting. First bedshitting. First time he’d heard Gabi’s voice. And now, first time he’d been suspended from the only job he knew how to do.

You’d have thought he’d get the message by now. But that was the thing that people didn’t understand. The booze worked. That was the message. People told you not to drink because drinking wouldn’t make you feel better. That was false. Drinking absolutely made you feel better. And if you drank enough, it made you feel nothing, which was the finest feeling of all. If the best thing the world had to offer you was to sit in a comfortable recliner sipping the peatiest single malt available, Pollini’s recording of the Chopin études filling the air, then for God’s sake, get to it, man. You might be leaping to your doom, but it would be from a great altitude; the wind sweet on your face, the view still pretty good from up here.

But now the ground was coming into view. Three days until impact.

One thing was clear. Whatever he decided to do when Griff rapped on the door Monday morning, there was no way he was going to commence his sobriety before then. He removed the Grey Goose from the freezer. He poured himself a large tumbler and was appreciating the play of late afternoon sun through the viscosity when his phone rang. It was Danielle, fresh out of court. She accepted his invitation to come over without hesitation. He put the tumbler in the freezer without taking a sip. He straightened up as best he could, the house and himself. She arrived after fifteen minutes.

“I expected someplace bigger,” she said as he directed her to the rented sofa.

“We sold bigger after the divorce.”

“Was it like the Bondurants’?”

“More or less.”

“Boy, you guys must have really wanted not to be married.”

“That would have been my wife.”

“The booze?”

“And the daughter.”

“Go ahead and drink if you want,” she said. “You look like you need it. I don’t give a shit.”

“Not alone. You’ll have to join me.”

“You don’t drink alone?” she asked dubiously.

“Not if there are other people around.”

He showed her the frosted bottle. She shrugged. He poured her a glass and retrieved his own from the freezer. She did a double take at the latter maneuver but said nothing.

“I don’t want to be one of those demanding guests, but can I at least have a slice of lime?”

He found a lime that looked like something being sent to the lab for a biopsy. He pulled a knife from the block and steadied himself over the chopping board to wait for the blade to stop vibrating like a struck tuning fork. And then she was standing beside him, her hand on his.

“I got this,” she said.

“So you were at court,” he said when they were seated.

She took a sip and then stared into the glass.

“They sat me across from his father. I tried to give him the evil eye but it just didn’t feel right. Any of it. The press conference, the courtroom. And the kid. He’s just a baby.”

“Still. People can surprise you.”

“I think you might be right, Patrick. Christopher Mahoun didn’t do this.”

“Okay.”

“I just don’t see it. But everybody’s so sure. Except you.”

“Have you looked online today?”

“No, I’m all set with online. If I want to be called a heartless bitch, I can just phone one of my exes.”