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go and accept that it was accidental.
But you could?
The police gave it a hard look it didn t make sense that anyone needed to
kill Adam for anything, for any reason at all. You know me. I just assumed
that the gods don t like to see me too happy. Adam had given me the future he
was smart and funny and warm and loving, and the happiest person I ever met.
As my mother would say, It just wasn t meant to be.
So instead of dancing in a white tent on our hilltop, we all came to this
beach Adam s favorite. His father and sister went out on his sailboat, brought
it around from Menemsha to this point, and scattered his ashes where they
thought he d want them to be. And this is where I come to talk to him, Mike,
like some madwoman in a bad novel, you re probably thinking. But I ll never
let go of him. It s where I always come to find him and love him, and know
that he loved me better than anything on earth.
That s the thing that killed him driving all night to get here to marry me.
Mike let me sit there alone for five or ten minutes while he walked further
down the beach, before returning with an outstretched arm to pull me up from
the sand.
Give me the keys, kid, and let s get to the plane. It would be my luck to get
marooned here overnight at a time when you re this maudlin, and stuck on
another guy.
We walked back to the car and Mike drove the short distance to the airport,
where we turned in the rental car and waited in the terminal for the perky
pilot to come back for the six o clock Cape Air flight to Logan. There was no
wind to speak of so even Mike stayed calm on the short hop into Boston.
I was leading him from the exit gate of the commuter plane to the corridor for
the connecting shuttle flight, when I heard Mike call out for me to stop. He
was standing still, staring at the television screen that was facing out at
him from the airport bar, and gesturing excitedly for me to walk back to him.
Hey, Coop, can you believe it?
Jeopardy must be on earlier up here than in New York. C mon, they re about
to do the Final Jeopardy question.
I reminded myself of a mother talking to a five-year-old kid as I shook my
head in annoyance and called out to him, No, Mike. Move it let s not miss the
seven o clock shuttle.
Wait a minute. What s your hurry? There s another plane in half an hour. The
category s the Oscars. What do you say, blondie? I ll bet you twenty-five
dollars.
Mike and I were both addicted to Jeopardy although I rarely got home in time
from the office to see the seven o clock show. There were some subjects I
wouldn t bet him on like the Bible because he beat me every time. And I had a
few topics that he wouldn t touch.
But we usually passed our ten dollars back and forth from week to week,
challenging each other on our known weaknesses, when the ante could rise
considerably. Mercer Wallace swears the worst time to get killed in Manhattan
is between six fifty-five and seven-thirty in the evening.
He has known Chapman to stand in an airless tenement in the middle of July
with three bodies strewn around a homicide scene, listening to Alex Trebek
recite the answers to the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds while calling
out the questions in response, as the medical examiner silently probes the
corpses for clues.
I turned around and reached for my wallet, since we both knew the movies
pretty well.
It ll cost you fifty if you make me stay. I could see he wasn t leaving in
the next three minutes, in time to make the flight, so I put my money on the
bar and told Chapman to do the same.
He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, ordered us each a drink, and turned to me
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with a sheepish grin on his face.
I ve only got twenty bucks. I have to pick up my paycheck at the office when
we get in. Trust me?
I nodded as Trebek announced that the Final Jeopardy answer was: the only two
actors who have ever won Oscars back-to-back, in consecutive years.
Mike and I both slammed our hands on the edge of the wooden bar counter at the
same time, as though pressing the buzzer as the contestants on the program do.
Tom Hanks and Gary Cooper.
Wrong. You better cash your check tonight, Chapman.
Whaddaya mean wrong? Who do you say?
Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy. Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, Captains
Courageous and Boys Town.
What about Gary Cooper? High Noon and Pride of the Yankees?
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