The Executor Part 13

I came up the front porch. I'd gone out for a walk while Daciana cleaned, and my s.h.i.+rt was damp from having crossed over the river to the Business School and back. The Subaru was no longer in the driveway.

"I've been knocking," he said. "I was about to give up."

I told him to wait outside while I got his check, then went to the library, where I had tucked the envelope away on one of the shelves. Reaching for it, my eye was drawn by the glint of the latch on the gun case.

"Lemme ask you something."

I hadn't heard him behind me; my scalp tightened, and I turned, the check pinched tightly between my fingers. "What."

"Is everything all right here?"

"What do you mean."

"I mean here. With you and me."

"Why wouldn't it be all right."

"I dunno, man. I feel like you don't like me very much."

"I don't know why you think that."

"Because every time I come by you look like you want to skin me." He smiled. "Hey, I'm just messing. Look, I want to tell you something. I think it's fantastic, everything you do for my aunt. It's great that she has someone like you. I'd do it myself, if I could."

I said nothing.

"Seriously, though, I want us to be cool. Are we cool?"

"Sure."

"Oh, man," he said. "You're a s.h.i.+tty liar."

I felt myself flush. "I don't not like you."

"I think that means you don't like me, either."

"It, it doesn't mean that."

"So you're saying you do like me."

"I ..." I looked at him evenly. "I don't have an opinion."

His eyes seemed to bug out. Then he laughed loudly, a curiously artificial sound, like a sitcom laugh track.

"Would you keep it down, please," I said.

"You are funny. You know that? You're killing me, here."

"Do you mind? She's sleeping."

"Yeah," he said, still laughing. "Sorry."

Silence. I held the check out to him.

"Hey, thanks."

Now that he had gotten his treat, I expected him to go, but he remained there, grinning at me.

"Was there something else you needed," I said.

"No, man. I'm good. But. Look. You hungry? Cause I'm starving. You want to get some lunch?"

I was in fact very hungry, but I wasn't about to tell him that. I shrugged.

"Come on. On me. Token of my appreciation."

In the ten minutes it took to walk to Central Square, I must've asked myself what I was doing a hundred times. The answer I gave was: for Alma. For Alma I would bear sitting with him. For Alma I would get him away from the house.

"Here we go," he said, holding open the door of an Irish pub.

At that hour the only other patrons reminded me of my father: working-cla.s.s men, their hunched postures telling of lives whose sole consolation had been a Barcalounger. The stereo piped something screechy and aggressive; with the volume on low, the overall impression was that the singer wanted to tear apart society, tenderly.

We found a booth and ordered, and Eric took charge of the conversation, asking where I'd been born, how I'd come to Harvard, where I'd lived before I met Alma, how I'd met her, and so forth. Since he'd started coming around, I had done my best to avoid speaking to him. In a way I had set myself up for this lunch, because he could now ask me lots of questions without making it seem like an interrogation, questions that I could not refuse to answer without looking like a jerk. The combined effects of social conditioning and charisma make for a powerful truth serum: I knew what was happening, and still I found myself disclosing more than I knew to be appropriate. More than I had ever told Alma. We had not gotten to my brother's death when the food came, making me grateful for something to put in my mouth. I waited until he took a bite of his own burger, then attempted to grab the wheel.

"So what is it you do?" I asked.

He paused, mid-chew. "Me?"

"Yes."

"Well, what do you mean."

"I mean what do you do."

"Like a job, you mean?"

"If that's the answer."

"All right," he said. "Well, you know. I have some things going on."

"Like what kind of things."

"Business opportunities," he said. "I can't really talk about it."

"Sounds top secret," I said.

"I don't want to jinx anything, you know? I do what I have to do. We all have to, right? You do what you need to do. I mean, look at you."

I put down my burger. "How's that."

"I'm saying, you're right at home. You're where you belong."

I said nothing.

"I'm glad you're around. Like I said, I'd be there myself if I could. It's not-you know. I've lived with her, it wasn't a good arrangement. But she needs someone around, and I gotta say, man: I'm glad it's you.

"... thanks."

"I mean, you really care about her, don't you."

"Of course."

"I can tell. It shows. I care about her, too. You know? I worry about her all the time, though. This thing she has ... Don't tell me it doesn't worry you."

I said nothing.

"Doesn't it?"

"It does."

"There you go. Course it does, you care about her. I mean, you have to ask yourself if she's getting better." He paused. "What do you think?"

"About what."

"Is she getting better or not."

"... no."

"Getting worse, actually."

Silence.

"It's hard to tell," I said.

"Well, you ask me, my opinion, lately it's a h.e.l.l of a lot worse than I've ever seen, and I've known her a long time. Like, twice, three times a week now?"

"It's not always that bad."

"But it is sometimes."

I nodded.

"That's crazy, man. It was never like that when I lived with her."

"I guess so."

"I'm tellin you. Even from your end you must've seen enough to know she ain't improving."

I conceded that she was not.

"Right," he said. "I mean, you and me probably know her better than anyone else at this point. So what do you think?"

"What do you think I think, I think it's awful."

"Nnn. That's not what I mean. What I mean, in your opinion, is she happy?"

I wanted to blurt out yes, of course she was happy, of course. She had me, after all. But could I honestly make that claim? I felt ashamed to realize that in all the time I'd known Alma, I'd never thought to ask myself that question. How does one measure happiness ? Can one a.s.sign it a quant.i.ty? The utilitarian attempt to do just that is now considered risible. Enumerate the soft signs, then: she still smiled when we talked (although, these days, how often did we talk?): still ate her chocolate (although how often did she feel hungry?). Did these behaviors mean anything? Were they artifacts? Where did the real proof lie? I thought back to our very first conversation, which had begun with the question of whether it is better to be happy or intelligent. At the time, setting those two concepts up in opposition had seemed eminently reasonable. Now, as I sat listening to the quiet fury on the stereo and the waitress telling the bartender to kiss her sweet a.s.s and the men snorting into their beers, I wondered if the happiness I thought I'd given Alma was merely a wan projection of that which she gave me.

"I don't know," I said.

"If you don't know," he said, "the answer's no."

I said nothing.

"And, I mean, what if she gets worse. You must have thought about that."

"I hope not."

"Course not. I mean, sure, I wish I could stop it. That's make-believe, though. So, I dunno. If it's never going to get better, and if it's getting worse, worse, like it looks like it is, then what do you do with that? I mean, what the h.e.l.l does a person like it looks like it is, then what do you do with that? I mean, what the h.e.l.l does a person do?" do?"

"I don't know."

"Me neither. I just don't f.u.c.king know. n.o.body does. You know? Maybe there is no answer."

"Maybe not."

"Yeah. Maybe." He studied his fingernails. "I can't say how you feel about this, but since you care about her, like I do, I bet that you think it, too. Sometimes I wonder if it'd be better if, I mean, better for her to just-whhhp. You know?" You know?"

I caught myself nodding and stopped. What, exactly, did he think I knew?

"For her sake," he said.

What I read in his eyes froze my heart.

"You boys all set?" said the waitress.

Eric smiled at her. "All set."

"You want a beer, shout."

"Will do."

She left. When he spoke again, I heard him through static.

"Look," he said. "Whatever happens to her-and something's gotta happen at some point, and for her sake, you have to hope that it's sooner rather than later. She's in pain. Sooner rather than later, something's going to happen. It might be difficult to think about. It might make us uncomfortable. But it's a fact. Life is life.

"You see what I mean?

"I can tell what you're thinking. 'Look at her. She's already-what. Seventy-eight? Seventy-nine? Even if we sit back and wait, how much longer can it go on?' And you'd be right to think that way, you would. So let me tell you something else, something you might not know, which is the family history. You're gonna have to trust me on this when I say that she could hang in there a long, long time. It runs in the family. Longer than anyone wants-her most of all. I mean, you're smart. Use your imagination for a second. What would it be like for her if this went on for another, I don't know, twenty years? All of a sudden it's not so simple anymore.