Page 93 of Deja New
FORTY-FOUR
His cell rang, which was unwelcome. Jason wasn’t stupid enough to imagine it was Angela explaining she had waited until summer to pull an April Fool’s prank.
He’d known trying to go to sleep was futile and it was too soon to wax the floors again. He wasn’t hungry and he wasn’t thirsty. He had no stomach for work and didn’t feel like reading. So he was flipping through channels and rediscovering what most insomniacs knew: It didn’t matter how many channels you had or where in the world you were, there was nothing on at 1:00 a.m.
The hell with it. He didn’t recognize the number, but picked it up anyway. Woe betide the pollster in the wrong time zone who wanted his opinion on current events.
“Hello.”
“I hear you been stirring shit with a stick over at ICC, Chambers.”
“Mom?”
A gusty aggrieved sigh: “You know damned well I’m not your dead mom. This is Kline.”
Perfect.
“Kline, why are you pestering me in the wee hours? Are you so bad at retiring they’ve kicked you out of retiring? And if you are, why the hell would you callmeto complain?”
“Buddy of mine works Intake Processing gave me a call tonight. Name’s Maller.”
Hmm. “Yes, I met him this afternoon.”
“He’s not really a buddy,” Kline explained, as if Jason had declared Kline had no buddies and demanded the exact truth of their relationship. “He’s married to my niece. She’s a nice kid, but he’s a shithead. He’s a gun owner and says he likes hunting, bullshit! He’s a vegetarian! How the fuck does that happen?”
“This is fascinating, Kline. Please don’t confuse that genuine sentiment with sarcasm. I’ll be crushed.”
“Anyway, turns out he was tryin’ ta help you out and got fired for it. I coulda told him it was a waste of time.”
Oh, hell.“Sorry to hear that.” And he was. Maller had seemed like a good enough guy, and had appeared to genuinely appreciate Leah’s offer of help.
“Well, he was short, outta there by the end of the month anyway, wasn’t all bad. They’re moving to the ’burbs and he hates the commute.”
“It’s kind of you to keep me up-to-date on the minutiae of your family’s lives.”
“You think I’m callin’ you at...” He heard hissing and immediately knew what Kline was doing. He was fond of belching,but felt it was ungentlemanly to make a lot of noise indulging his frequent, Coke-inspired gas attacks. So he hissed the belch into his fist, which took longer, was more startling, and called more attention to him than just letting it rip would have. Of all the noises Kline’s body made, the hissing was the one Jason missed least. “...one-fuckin’-thirty in the morning to give you updates on my niece’s move?”
“Yes, Kline. That’s what I think. Feel free to set me straight, unless you want me to commit to helping them move, in which case, I will cordially invite you to get lost.”
“Lighten the fuck up. I swear you’re the most uptight guy. Know what your problem is?”
“That would be problems, plural. And yes.”
“You need ta get laid.”
Jason laughed and for a few seconds, worried he might not be able to stop. He had to wipe his eyes before he could continue. “You were saying why you called.”
“Yeah, I was. So whatever you and those Insighters did, ya freaked Dennis out.”
“Astute and to the point, Kline, as ever.”
“Shaddup. I got the whole thing from Maller when we hit the bar. So ICC hadda do a whole TD*and bundle his howling ass to seg, right? Well, while they were bringing Drake to his new digs, he was yellin’ ’bout how his wife was gonna kill him, how even after all this time she was still pissed and she wasn’t gonna let go until the kids let go.”
Jason, who had been slumped on his couch half watching a rerun ofThe Tudors
(pilgrimage of Grace and Jane Seymour, not bad but season two’s more interesting. more and Fisher and the court of two queens)
dropped the remote. On his foot, but he hardly noticed. “Dennis Drake isn’t married.”
