4
This is going to take a while. Part of Luke is frustrated by this, but a larger, more secretive, artistic part of him is glad for the challenge of it. When he interviews someone for a piece – which is rarely – it’s all shorthand, tape recorders, and wedging into too-tight corners of coffee shops, his mark shifting, impatient, and nervous as a prospective john caught hiring a call girl. Like there’s somethingwrongwith making a statement that will be put down on paper. People want to be transparent and transient these days. They don’t want anything to stick to them: not mortgage payments, not weekend plans, and not something they said one time to that moody loser with the glasses.
But Will, he can tell already, is a storyteller. And there’s a grave shortage of those in his life.
Sandy brings Will a plate of breakfast and sets it up in front of him on a TV tray. She brings fresh coffee for Luke, and gives him another encouraging shoulder squeeze. Promises she’ll be doing yoga in the den and to “holler” if they need anything.
“She’s sweet,” Luke observes.
“She’s sweet, yeah. And she’ll gut you like a wolverine too, you push her that way,” Will says. He digs a silver flask from the chair cushion beside him and pours a healthy finger of amber liquid into his coffee. He offers it to Luke, who shrugs, and does the same for himself, passes it back.
He can tell from the scent that it’s bourbon.
Luke lets Will get halfway through his pancakes before he says, “So whydidyou hit that protester?”
Will makes a rude sound in his throat. “You really are a reporter, ain’t ya?”
“Writer. I don’t like to use the R-word.”
“That’s why you got your little notebook out, then? ‘Cause you’re awriter?”
“All writers keep notebooks. It’s law. You can’t knock law.”
“Watch me.”
Luke sips coffee to hide a smile. “Okay. So. You’re deflecting. Let’s talk protester smack down.”
“Bah.”
“I’m sorry.” He almost spits coffee all over himself. “What was that?”
“You heard me.”
Bah. So clearly, he’s interviewing one of the old guys fromThe Muppets.
“But the protester,” Luke redirects.
“What about him?”
“You hit him.”
“He was being a jackass.”
“Is that what they put in the police report?”
“And you’re being asmartass,” Will says, but doesn’t sound all that disapproving.
Luke shrugs. “I can’t deny that.”
Will eats with a methodical steadiness, like someone who’s used to putting away calories out of necessity. It reminds Luke of his reflection, the glimpses of it he sometimes catches in his office window back home, as he shovels in a stale pastry stolen from the break room because he’s woozy, but not because he’s hungry.
“I don’t normally eat breakfast either,” Luke says.
Will grunts something that sounds agreeing and swallows. “Sandy won’t let me get away with skipping it. I gotta take my pills with food.”
“Ah.”
“Something to look forward to if you ever live to be an old man: enough pills to kill a horse every day.”
