FRIENDS FOR LIFE
Prologue
The hot sun beat down on the courtyard but underneath the colonnade it was shady and much cooler. A light breeze made the hanging baskets of purple and pink fuchsias sway gently. The thick adobe walls blocked out the noise from the parking lot and from the busy, nearby streets, so the splash of water in the fountain could be heard clearly. A variety of small birds pecked for grubs and insects in the dirt, the bees droned on and he was glad he'd arrived first. The peace of this place was always a tonic for him. Even though he lived here, he rarely had the opportunity to just sit and do the dusty equivalent of watching the grass grow. There wasn't one blade of grass in the courtyard. Just packed, yellow, sandy dust. He sat down on one of the benches to wait.
When he'd picked up the phone a few days earlier he wasn't expecting to hear Jack's voice on the other end of the line. They hadn't spoken for almost a year, since after Jack had gotten out of the hospital the last time. At least, he thought it was the last time. But as always happened between them when Jack did one of these surprise re-surfacings it was as if they'd shot pool together only the other day. There was a little catching up on the few mutual friends from the old days that either of them still kept in touch with, a truncated update on Kim, and then Jack got to the point of the call.
"I know this isn't much notice but I'd like to see you. Can you give me an hour or so one afternoon this week?"
He'd quickly checked his calendar. He was booked solid, and scheduled to be out of town from Thursday on. But with a little jiggling...
"How about Wednesday at 1:00?" he said.
He saw him enter the courtyard from the opposite side. He must have walked all the way around to avoid setting even one toe inside. Jack was still as trim and as light on his feet as he was twenty year ago. Ed Vallone thought ruefully about the 15 extra pounds he was carrying, the broken resolutions to run every other day. He knew that if Jack didn't get his five daily miles in there was some form of national emergency underway, like the country was about to be invaded by Martians.
Except for the hair, which was thinner and showed some gray around the temples, (and the lines in his face, of course), Jack looked like he'd looked in high school when he was running cross country and playing Babe Ruth baseball in the fall. In the spring he was the first string shortstop on the varsity, even though he was just a sophomore. Well, he had made the varsity that year too, he reminded himself. He was the catcher. They loved to pick men off who were trying to steal second. No one had done it to them since they played in Majors in Little League. It was their specialty.
Sophomore year had been a good year. The year before things began to change. He rose to greet him. Their embrace was strong, solid, and genuine.
"Thanks for shifting your schedule around on such short notice" Jack began, finally removing his sunglasses.
"Well, you never have as much flexibility as I do. And I knew if you called it must be important."
Jack turned for a moment and looked out at the courtyard. "It must be 15 degrees cooler under here than it is out in the parking lot. It's always so peaceful. It makes it seem like its a hundred years ago."
He poured himself a glass of iced tea from the nearby pitcher and joined Ed on the bench that was set up against the building's solid, smooth wall. They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, listening to the fountain and enjoying the quiet. Ed eyed him closely.
"What have you been up to?"
"I haven't really been out in the field since the last time we talked. Well, a few small things, but nothing worth mentioning, really."
So "the last time" was the one Ed knew about. The one where Kim had called him in the middle of the night because it was doubtful Jack would make it to the morning. It had been chilly for that time of year, which had helped since they hadn't been able to find him for two or three hours. The cold had lowered his heart rate, slowed his metabolism, slowed the bleeding. They'd still had to pump 10 pints of blood into him.
"But you're going out now, aren't you."
"Yes" Jack smiled, turning to look at him. "That's always when I come to bother you, isn't it."
"Tell me, are you still with Kate?" he asked, with the comfortable directness of an old friendship.
Ed had met her at the hospital. A beautiful, gracious and surprisingly strong woman who was obviously in love with Jack. They'd gotten to know each other waiting in the hospital corridor, or in the lounge, with Kim.
The smile faded.
"Good question. I moved out a month ago. We just weren't headed in the same direction. But we're still seeing each other, in fits and starts. I just left her, actually. She said to say hello." He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"I'm going to be away for a while, "Jack continued. "So I think its better this way. It lets her get on with her life. Besides, I couldn't promise...there are just no guarantees in this business. So its time to end it."
Eddie gave him a look.
"What happened?"
From anyone else it would have been considered prying.
"It's this damned job. Or rather, it's me and this damned job." He walked restlessly over to the colonnade, and sat down on the ledge facing Ed.
"She wanted me to get a different job, at least to quit field work. That last time really shook her up. It worries her. She knows there's a lot to be worried about, more than Teri ever did.
"She knows because she's seen what I do. It wasn't just that her sister was in the middle of it. Kate had to do things, she saw things that she should have never had to see or do. She saw me interrogate her own sister. Not to mention she saw me beat the crap out of somebody else. She thought for a while there that I'd ordered...well, let's just say it was something I hope I never have to really do.
"But, the thing is, she knows I'd do it. She knows I'd do it if I had to. Sometimes I think that's what really scares her. The thought of what I'd be able to do if something had to be done. She doesn't want me to have to do those things, you see. Because there are consequences. Even if it's the right choice, even if it's the only way, there are, still, consequences. None of its free."
Jack paused for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. Then he seemed to come to a conclusion about something, because he went on again.
"She saw all of that, and, still, she wanted to be with me." He spoke as if the entire situation continued to baffle him. "But I think she'd just had enough. There were too many nights where she had no idea where I was or what I was doing or if I'd be home by Thanksgiving or by Christmas. She didn't want to face another frantic trip to the hospital at two am."
"So was this split her idea, or yours?"
He sighed. There was no keeping things back, once he started talking to Eddie. That was the danger of these meetings. Eddie got down to the heart of things pretty quickly.
"Well, more me than her." Another pause. Jack was having a hard time, a very hard time, with the next part.
"She wanted to start a family," he said finally. "To have a child. And I just can't go there. So my things are all sitting in boxes in Kim's basement. I moved out" he repeated, "and, at the same time, I've been spending every spare moment I've got left, before I go, with her." He smiled weakly. "It doesn't make any sense, does it?"
"Well, what she's saying makes sense to me, at least".
"Thanks a lot."
"But I can also understand if you don' t want to take on the responsibility of having young children all over again. It strikes me as if it's all just too bad. Because I know how much you cared for her. And how difficult it was for you to let yourself do that again."
Jack looked away from him.
"It's worse than that, Eddie. I love her. The work, I think in the end, she would have made peace with that. She would have at least put up with it for however much longer I'm in shape to do it.
"It's the other thing," he continued, "...I couldn't even meet her half way on that. It was the one thing, the only thing, she ever really asked me to do. And I told her no. I said no to something as wonderful as a child.
"I'm the coward here. Not Kate."
He stood up and moved back over to the bench.
"So it's a good thing if I get out of the picture now" he concluded briskly. "Because, that way, she has a chance to find somebody else."
Eddie wondered if Kate would see things in quite the same light.
"Maybe the chief attraction of having a child" he suggested quietly "was that it would have been yours." When Jack didn't respond, he continued "I mean, given the wonders of modern science, there are other alternatives, if the point is to have a child, period."
"Well, whatever" Jack said, shutting the conversation down and completely missing the point. "It's not going to happen now. I leave in a day or so. And I'll be gone for almost a year, if not longer. So it's over."
How could someone be so clever, so perceptive and inventive, Ed wondered, when he needed to get out of an impossibly tight spot and. at the same time, be stunningly tone deaf when it came to making sense of his own life?
Ed felt absolutely certain, almost as if she'd told him this herself, that Kate wanted Jack's child, not because she thought they would be able to raise it together. But because she wanted to have something of Jack left to love when he was gone; when they finally caught up with him, and killed him. Now, if he knew that, on the basis of a total of about ten hours of conversation, and a few cook outs around the pool, how could Jack not know it about a woman he'd lived with for over two years?
Here was another example, he mused, of what he'd come to call, to himself, "the hole in Jack's brain." There wasn't a problem with the man's heart. There was a great capacity to love there, a fierce determination to take care of others, even if they were people he didn't know and would never meet. He had a deep respect for simple, ordinary people. He understood what they had to put up with to make sure there was food on the table. He'd seen Jack in absolute agony and he'd seen his face light up with a pure, almost ecstatic happiness. The capacity to feel everything was there.
But when it came to understanding how others felt about him, and why they felt that way, Jack was at a loss. He was especially mystified if they liked him. He still didn't understand why Kate loved him and he probably never understood why Teri loved him, either. He knew they did but, on the inside, he couldn't really comprehend why anyone would feel that way.
Jack was like the conductor who knew, instinctively, how each instrument in the orchestra needed to be played if the symphony was going to sound right. But ask him how he knew that, and he couldn't understand why you needed to ask the question. Wasn't it obvious? He'd ask, with his head tilted to one side like he couldn't quite believe that you were raising the question honestly, that you weren't just pulling his leg. Ask him why the flute player detested him and he could give you five pretty good reasons why that was so, if he thought about it for half an hour. But point out that the cellist would willingly die for him, and ask him why, and he'd shrug his shoulders and give you a perplexed look that said, "I don't know. You tell me". And it wasn't false modesty. He really didn't know.
It was a phenomenon that reminded Ed, so clearly it was as if it had happened yesterday, of the night of their great adventure. The night when he'd begun to see how many layers there were to Jack, how he was constantly working on three or four different things at the same time, busy keeping straight who needed to know what about each one of the several irons he had heating up in the fire. The night when he'd finally comprehended that Jack was both "seventeen going on thirty" and struggling to make it to seventeen and a half.