Page 21 of Nobody's Fool

But again thereisa connection. The connection is yours truly.

So though I can’t see how—the real definition ofcoincidencestates that it is a remarkable occurrence of events or circumstances withoutapparentcausal connection—could somehow the reappearances of both Anna and Tad Grayson in my life be connected? Or am I the one now guilty of narcissism or metaphysical solipsism or, more simply put, egocentrism—that is, the world revolves around me?

My head is starting to hurt.

My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Arthur:

WHERE ARE THE PHOTOS??!!

I check my watch—an old Casio I found abandoned on a bus bench. I had taken the visitors’ bus out here from Jay Street and the Metro-Tech Center in Brooklyn, but the bus back was still forty-five minutes away from leaving.

“I assume you drove here?” I ask Marty.

“Yes.”

“Can you give me a lift back to midtown?”

CHAPTER SIX

Marty tries to get me to talk, but I don’t give him much. He hates silence and fills it with self-help jargon and discussions about his new workout regimens. Right now, he is singing the praises—yes, the upcoming pun is intentional—of something called Cycle Karaoke, which is exactly what you think it is.

“Guess what my favorite cool-down song is,” he says.

“‘If I Die Young’?”

“No!” he says with that puppy-like enthusiasm. “‘Save a Prayer’ by Duran Duran.”

He glances at me to see my reaction. When we first met, “Come Undone” by Duran Duran came on my car radio. He had never heard of the song. He had never heard of Duran Duran.

We are on Park Avenue now.

“Okay,” I say. “You can drop me off on the corner over there.”

White Shoe Law is on Park Avenue and Forty-Seventh Street, near the MetLife Building and across the street from the Lock-Horne Building. I jump out fifteen minutes before the Peyton Booth divorce mediation.

I am nothing if not ready.

Like almost everyone in New York City, I wear a backpack. In it, I have caps from various delivery services—Prime, UPS, DHL, FedEx. I have caps from Con Ed, Verizon, Sprint, Spectrum. I can’t carryuniforms for all these companies, obviously, but I can (and do) carry a neon-green reflective vest with the wordSECURITYprinted on the back. It does the trick. I also have various fake identification/credentials I can slip into a clear plastic name badge. You’d be shocked at how easy it is to move about with these, but in this case, I don’t need much.

I’ve already donned the FedEx cap and the reflective vest. I hold the envelope in my hand and wait on the corner. I hope that I’m not too late, but Arthur is blowing up my phone like a stalker. Up ahead I see a black SUV pull up to the front of the building. Peyton Booth steps out with a confident air. He sports a fake tan, a light gray business suit sans tie, and a crisply ironed shirt so white I almost reach for sunglasses. I don’t know what brand of shoes he’s wearing and I’m too far away to know for sure, but I can tell they even smell expensive.

I hurry toward him, envelope in hand. Two other suited men, both with ties, step out of the car with him. His attorneys, I deduce. That may make this all the more delicate for Peyton, but that’s all up to him.

“Courier delivery for Peyton Booth,” I say.

As I hand him the envelope, one of the two lawyers, a big guy, steps in my way and puffs out his chest. I know this kind of poser. I’m small and South Asian. Easy pickings, he thinks. But I also always mentally prepare. I focus on—need be—how my knee will slam into his balls.

Takes away the size advantage.

“Is this a subpoena?” Puffy Chest asks me.

I point to my FedEx cap. “Does this say subpoena delivery service?”

“Oh, I’ve seen servers pretend to be a lot of things.”

“That sounds unethical,” I tell him with top-notch fake earnestness. “But no, I’m not a server. I was told to give this to Mr. Peyton Booth and that it was very private.”

Puffy Chest doesn’t like it, but I scoot around him before he canask more questions. I jam the envelope into Peyton Booth’s chest, try and fail to make eye contact, and hurry away. When I’m around the corner on Forty-Eighth Street, I take off the cap and vest. Then I wait and watch. Peyton Booth and his attorneys enter the building. I give them a little bit of a lead before following. I want them to get up to White Shoe before me—but nottoolong before me.

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