Page 96 of We Could Be So Good
He wishes Andy were here. Then they could talk it out, figure out what they’re going to do, come to some kind of understanding.
Some very unhelpful voice in Nick’s head points out that it doesn’t matter if they come to an understanding, that whatever they have between them wasn’t going to last anyway, that it’s just as well for it to end with a quarrel as it is for it to end when they both get too terrified of being exposed to even look at one another or when Andy decides he needs to move on.
Except—for two months he’s counted on knowing that each day would begin with bringing Andy coffee and end with Andy either in his bed or in the next room; he’s taken for granted the presence of Andy on his couch, underfoot in his kitchen—ontheircouch, intheirkitchen. He’s happy. Andy’s happy. Throwing that away for any reason at all feels... twisted. Backward.
Andy might not even want it. Andy might decide that Nick isn’t worth the trouble, and Nick wouldn’t blame him. But even as that thought crosses his mind, he imagines Andy rolling his eyes.
***
By eight o’clock in the morning, Sal has eaten every last crumb of food in Nick’s kitchen and he’s still hungry. Nick has a healthy appetite himself, but it turns out he has nothing on a fourteen-year-old boy.
“We’ll go get bagels,” Nick offers. After that they’ll have to do something about clothes for the kid, because he isn’t going to fit into anything of Nick’s and he can’t keep walking around in his wrinkled school uniform.
The weather is decent, so they walk to the good bagel place on MacDougal. They each order a bagel with cream cheese, and then Nick orders another half dozen plain bagels. He figures Sal will have put away three by the time they get home.
As he’s placing the order, Nick remembers all the other times he’s bought bagels during the past two months, usually with Andy at his side, bleary-eyed and begging for coffee. It’s become a Sunday morning ritual, and even though it isn’t Sunday, Nick feels its absence.
“You know what?” Nick says when they step outside into sunlight that suddenly seems blinding after the dim bagel shop. “Inearly forgot. I have to go see Andy about something. Come on.” He begins to walk toward the Bleecker Street subway station.
“You see him every day at work,” Sal points out.
“It’s urgent.”
“You could call him. There’s a pay phone across the street.”
“Pipe down and eat another bagel.”
The holy mother and all the saints must be smiling down on them because a Lexington Avenue Local rolls into the station just as Nick and Sal reach the platform. And by another miracle, Nick remembers Andy’s father’s address from the New Year’s Eve party. It can’t be more than five minutes before Nick and a bewildered but bagel-drunk Sal emerge onto Sixty-Eighth Street. They stop at a Chock full o’Nuts and get a pair of coffees in little paper cups, one with about a pound of sugar and the other the way normal people like it. Sal gets a doughnut.
“Nick Russo here to see Mr.Fleming,” Nick tells the doorman when they arrive at the building, wishing he were wearing something less scruffy than a pair of Levi’s and the first shirt he managed to lay his hands on, which is somehow already rumpled, and the sleeves of which are rolled up. He looks like the janitor and Sal looks like an urchin he rescued from a street fight. Jesus Christ. They’re going to wind up in jail.
The doorman picks up a telephone receiver. “Mr.Fleming says to go on up. Seventeenth floor,” he says a moment later, looking as if he wishes Nick and Sal would hurry up and get on the elevator and stop cluttering up his lobby. Nick grabs Sal by the sleeve and tows him along. The elevator operator manages not to look scandalized. He probably has better things to do than judge however many hundred people he sees in his elevator every day.
“Jeez,” Sal says. “This elevator is nicer than most churches.”
Sal’s not wrong. The elevator is fitted in shiny brass and polished wood. Nick remembers when he first visited Andy’s old apartment to fix his sink and spent the rest of the day vaguely disoriented to realize that he was now friends with someone who not only was rich, but lived like a rich person, with gleaming dark doors and soft carpets and hallways that didn’t smell like the neighbors’ cooking. He had felt like he was seeing Andy in his natural habitat for the first time. Now when he thinks of where Andy belongs, he sees bare feet on the old green sofa, and he doesn’t know whether he’s deluding himself.
Nick knocks on the apartment door, knowing that Andy will be expecting him after the doorman called up, but acutely nervous despite, or maybe because of, that. When the door opens, though, it’s Mr.Fleming. He’s leaning on a cane.
“Sir,” says Nick, trying not to look dismayed.
“This is a surprise,” Mr.Fleming says, not sounding remotely surprised. “Come in.”
“I came to see Andy. For work. He’s here, isn’t he? I think he’s here?” This last bit comes out like a prayer. “And this is my nephew, Salvatore. Sal, this is Mr.Fleming, he’s the publisher of theChronicle.”
Sal was raised right despite Michael being a dirtbag, so he swallows his doughnut, puts on his best manners, and says that he’s pleased to meet Mr.Fleming.
“Andy’s still asleep,” Mr.Fleming says.
Nick reflexively looks at his watch. It’s a few minutes past nine. He almost tells Mr.Fleming that if left up to his own devices, Andy would sleep until noon, but then decides this is probably too familiar. Then Nick remembers that Mr.Flemingknowsand it’s only the thought of seeing Andy that keeps him from fleeing the premises.
“Dad? I thought I heard—”
Nick looks up and sees Andy rubbing his eyes and wearing an unfamiliar pair of plaid pajamas, his hair disorganized in the way it always is in the morning. He stares at Nick like he’s the eighth Wonder of the World.
“I’m here about the City Hall situation,” Nick says, hoping it will get that dopey grin off Andy’s face, even if Nick wants to remember that expression forever. He wants it printed on playing cards and commemorative plates.
“Right,” Andy says. “The City Hall situation.”
