A Better Goodbye Read Free Page B

voices had shouted loudest when the rest of him was ready to shut down, and now, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, he could see the weariness in his eyes. There were still women who liked his looks—they liked his smile too, though a smile was a sometimes thing for him. It was as if his mind was always focused on what he saw now, scars above and below each eye and a broken nose that had never been set properly. At least those wounds had healed. It was the deeper ones he feared never would, the ones he was forever struggling to keep at bay.
    As he walked out of the bathroom, he shook his head disapprovingly at how he’d slept in his sweatshirt and jeans. That wasn’t his style. His apartment proved it, everything squared away, no matter how big a mess his head might be. The place wasn’t much, but it was all he needed. That and the money to keep him in it for another month. He was trying to think of a way to come up with it when the phone rang. It was Coyle, sounding like a call so early made him some kind of a comedian.
    â€œYeah, I’m awake,” Nick said. “What’s going on?”
    â€œIt’s time I did you a favor,” Coyle said.
    â€œWhy do I think there’s something in it for you?”
    Coyle had never been a fanatic about his marriage, and this time he wanted Nick to drive his beer truck for a couple of hours while he boned a liquor store clerk he’d met on his route. For his part Nick would make two hundred bucks in cash, more money than he’d seen in a day since he’d maxed out his unemployment.
    â€œBig spender,” Nick said.
    â€œIt’s what I pay when I’m paying for it,” Coyle said, with the confidence of a man who had a job he wasn’t going to lose.
    â€œYeah? Well, I’ll try not to think about what that makes me. Looks like you got a deal.”
    â€œMan, I’m gonna fuck her so good I’ll wish I was her.”
    Coyle had used the same line when they were throwing bags for Delta at LAX, but Nick let it slide. It was easier just to picture Coyle’s leering face and oddly canted posture. He always looked like he was going to fall in your lap, but somehow the ladies didn’t seem to mind. Or maybe he just concentrated on those with low standards.
    It wasn’t like he’d had a lot of time to explain his philosophy of chasing tail to Nick. On a big day before the 9/11 horror show, they would be part of a three-man crew that turned seven or eight planes—bring ’em in, unload ’em, load ’em, and push ’em, one after the other. The repetition drove Coyle nuts, but Nick welcomed the numbing predictability, letting it swallow him whole for twenty-two dollars an hour.
    The only time he came all the way out of his trance was to save Coyle’s ass. First, Coyle pissed off one of the two-to-eleven shift’s king-sized Tongans, then he got holier-than-thou with a do-ragged, corn-rowed gang kid who was stealing bags. The gangster backed down because his spine was made of what Nick suspected it was—chickenshit. But the Tongan was one of those guys who thought brawling was fun, until Nick froze him with a shot to the liver and then walked away rather than throw any more punches.
    He offered no explanation, and he didn’t want Coyle’s thanks. Coyle, being Coyle, however, couldn’t shut the fuck up. The guy stayed grateful even when the terrorist-freaked airline industry went into the toilet and Delta laid them both off. Sometimes Nick thought Coyle was embarrassed that his brother-in-law had gotten him on at Budweiser, except embarrassment wasn’t his style. It was more like he felt bad for Nick, which made Nick the one who was embarrassed. It was hard enough on his pride to find out that nobody was hiring, grab day work where he could, and count on $666 from the state every other week to keep him in a studio apartment with peeling paint and cancerous-looking