Page 176 of Two Marlboros

“No: herollsthem in the living room, but he smokes them outside.”

My father smiled, and I was ashamed of the tone in which I had reiterated that detail.

“If you’re okay with it, we’ll be okay with it. As long as he’s of age.”

After a second in which I was puzzled, I burst out laughing. So did my father, who turned up the volume of the television to cover our laughter.

“He’s 21 years old, don’t worry. And he looks a little like River Phoenix.”

Again, I had punctuated insignificant details, but that realization failed to dent the dumbfounded smile that, I could feel it, was plastered on my face. I met the complicit gaze of my father, who threw me an affectionate pat and joined my mother in the kitchen. She closed the door behind her back, and I was left alone again, in the midst of the second fiercest storm of my life, without the shadow of a rudder or a life preserver.

We all ate together soon after, in a cordial and all in all pleasant atmosphere. I greeted them with a hug and a promise to see each other again soon; after they had left, I threw myself back on the couch dead tired.

All that talk about Nathan had made me think back to his interrogation, the fact that he had professed his innocence regarding that cell phone, and the relief I had felt at his bewildered face when Church had put it in front of him. Of course, it might have been a set-up as Ash had privately implied, but sudden reactions are seldom false, and I had seen Nathan’s expression very well.

The television continued to talk for a good half an hour. News reports, commercials, a few comedy sketches. Then a catchy theme song. An upbeat tune that forced me to look up: a white coat, a jerk face, and fake laughter in the background.

The main character’s name was A..J. He was a newly graduated nurse and was interning at a major hospital. The assistant he worked with was too pretty for him and the boss was an asshole. It only took a few minutes to find out that the girl had been making fake moans to the main character and hadbeen spreading some rumors about the meaning of his initials. Actually, they were simply the acronym of his name - Adrian James - but the most disparate variants came out, which wrung a laugh out of me.

A.J.

If you pronounced them, they sounded like one word, but they were actually two letters.

I hurriedly got up from the couch, grabbed the briefcase with copies of the files and flew to my room. I scrolled through a couple of them until I found the folder related to the case. I laid it on the desk, turned on the lamp that lit the table, and sat down, pen and paper in hand.

I opened the folder and scanned the first page of the file, the one I had seen a billion times, and which contained the robbery statements. Underneath was another sheet, with Church’s signature at the bottom, summarizing in broad strokes the highlights of the case. I began to read it, but I could not find myself in his writing, so I threw down a picture of the situation in my own hand.

All that emerged was that we knew very little about Waitch; we had collected just a few intercepts of him, none of them significant.

I stared at those notes for another half hour. I looked at Waitch, Ryan, connected them with an arrow and hoped that the insight I had had would come back to me, but to no avail.

I dropped my pen and looked toward the clock radio, which read nine o’clock. All afternoon I had not heard from Nathan, and I wondered if he was still up. I picked up the phone and thought about composing a text to try to apologize to him, but no, that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to hear his voice, to talk to him and tell him what, because of Ash’s arrival, I had been holding in all day, because I couldn’t believe that thoseinsults, which I had certainly deserved, were the end stone of our relationship.

I dialed the number without much delay: the line was free. After a couple of seconds I cleared my throat, thinking he would answer shortly, but he didn’t. It kept ringing, and second after second, I had the feeling that I had developed a kind of dependence towards him - I needed him, period. Apparently, however, that need did not seem mutual, because after about thirty seconds the answering machine took over and I was forced to hang up. I tried to call back, and almost gasped when I heard him answer after a couple of rings.

“Sorry, I was in the shower,” he said immediately, without even saying goodbye. It sounded a lot like an apology, but he had every reason to make himself a little wanted.

“It’s okay.”

On the other end of the phone I heard a rustling, as if he was rubbing his hair with a towel; I tried hard not to imagine him with only that on his body.

“Listen...” I continued, and the sound of the towel stopped. “I’m really sorry about what happened.”

The phone rustled again, then I heard a dull thud, a sign that maybe he had laid the towel down somewhere.

“I know.”

He must have been naked, walking around the house, and I wished I was there with him so I could hold him in my arms, without malice.

“Perhaps, as you said, the best thing would be not to see each other these very days,” I continued. “But if you leave soon, I don’t think we will have many more opportunities to see each other again. That’s all.”

I had started that phone call thinking that he was basically sulking at me on purpose, but his continued silence made me fear that he really had it in for me.

“In any case,” I continued again, feeling that I had run out of tricks a bit, “I’d hate to see you leave knowing that we didn’t clear the air on this.”

I heard him inhale and exhale as I struggled more and more to make those same gestures because of the lump in my throat, which was becoming more pressing every second. Twice I had brought up the question of leaving, and twice he had ignored it altogether.

“I shouldn’t have yelled like that,” he whispered, and I closed my eyes and sighed with relief, because he didn’t hate me. “And I don’t like what happened, but I thought about it, and you certainly had your reasons. I understand that.”

---