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“I’ve got some unfinished business here, and your call made it obvious that now was the time to take care of it.”
“Ah,” Avery said. “Some sentiment of a human being is in there after all. This unfinished business, anything you want to share with a near-perfect stranger?”
“Maybe,” he said. “But a proper drink will be needed to get into the details.”
“You need hard alcohol to talk about yourself?”
“No, the alcohol is for you so you don’t judge me.”
“Is it that bad?”
“I’ll let you decide. And it’s really not that big of a mystery,” he said, standing from the table and pointing to the bar in the other room. “Love or the law. They’re man’s only two problems in this world.”
CHAPTER 31
Manhattan, NY Friday, July 2, 2021
THEY MOVED TO THE BAR. IT WAS NEARLY EMPTY AT 10:00 P.M. ON A Friday night and the mass exodus of the July Fourth weekend was on full display. Only one other couple was present at the bar. Dark mahogany lined the walls and ceiling of Keens and cast everything in an auburn shadow. They sat on adjacent stools. Walt ordered a rum, Avery a vodka.
“Since you’re part of the law,” Avery said, “I’m guessing it’s love. Tell me about her.”
“It sounds so easy when you put it like that. Simple and direct.”
“I blame my bluntness on law school. They teach you to zero in on the topic and push everything else aside.”
“You went to law school?” Walt asked, forgetting for a moment that the woman in front of him had a whole other life he was supposed to know nothing about. He sensed a shift in her demeanor as her two worlds overlapped.
Slowly, she nodded. “I did, but the whole attorney thing wasn’t for me. I figured that out after school, moved to LA to put my journalism major to use. But those same instincts are part of my job now. When I feel a story, or sense that there is something to be learned, I zero in on it with annoying focus. I apologize if I’m being too direct about this. You don’t have to tell me any more if it’s private.”
“No, I don’t mind. It’ll probably do me some good to talk about it. That’s what a shrink would probably say, anyway.”
“I can’t analyze, I can only listen.”
“Okay. Let’s see, the Cliffs Notes version goes something like this: Adultery sank my first marriage. She cheated, not me. We were both young and dumb, and not right for each other, so it was probably best that it blew up so fast. The ending of my second marriage stung a bit more. It fell apart because of children—I wanted them, she didn’t. And then, there was Meghan Cobb.”
There was a stretch of silence as Walt tried to figure out how to proceed.
“She’s the one who sent you to the Caribbean?” Avery asked.
Walt nodded. He took another swallow of rum and allowed the liquor to burn his throat. This last bit of rum pushed him past the tipping point, like it always did, and his mind drifted to the past.
For such life-threatening injuries, Walt’s hospital stay lasted only five days. Three had been spent in the ICU after surgery, and the final two in gen pop where he shuffled about with the other post-op patients proving he could walk and talk and pass gas. When the doctors were satisfied, they released him with a long list of restrictions. The discharge had come just in time. His partner’s funeral was the following day, and one way or another Walt planned to attend. If he had to pull the IV lines out of his arm and leave against medical advice, he was prepared to do so. But when Walt started to push, no one fought him. He had nearly died in an ambush that claimed his partner. No one was planning to deny him the honor of attending the funeral.
Walt was out of the woods. Dr. Eleanor Marshfield, the surgeon who had sewn him up, told Walt that the heart was a miraculous organ and as long as he didn’t overdo it in the first six months of recovery, he would be fine. The doctor, of course, could speak only to the physical recovery of Walt’s heart. She had no idea about the emotional damage he was about to endure.
Jim Oliver drove him home from the hospital.
“Thanks for the lift, Jim.”
“You need any help?”
“Nah, I’m good. A little slow but otherwise no worse for the wear.”
Walt opened the passenger-side door and slowly climbed out of the car, grunting in the process. After righting himself, he closed the door and leaned down to peer through the open window.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Jim said. “You need a ride to the funeral?”
