Page 9 of We Could Be So Good
“You’ll still need to call a plumber,” Nick says when he gets to his feet. “But that’ll hold at least for a day or two.” He puts the wrenches back in the toolbox, then brushes off the front of his jeans. When he looks up, Andy has an odd expression on his face.
“Do you want some coffee?” Andy asks, his voice strained.
“Uh, sure,” Nick says. “If it’s not too much trouble.” A mood of intense awkwardness has settled over the kitchen and Nick has no idea why.
Andy doesn’t move, and instead keeps looking at a spot near Nick’s shoulder. “Here’s your sweater,” he says, thrusting the garment at Nick and turning toward the icebox.
Right. Things got awkward because Nick is standing half naked in Andy’s kitchen. Well, maybe not half naked, because he has on jeans and an undershirt, but the undershirt is sleeveless and Nick is suddenly very conscious of every inch of his exposed skin.
Andy doesn’t want the reminder that his friend isn’t like him—that Nick has more in common with plumbers than with people who went to Ivy League colleges and live in—he looks around—extremely fancy apartments that really ought to have better pipes, what thehell.
There’s nothing wrong with plumbers. Obviously. Nick would prefer to spend time with almost any plumber, even the ones his brother knows, than any of Andy’s Ivy League friends. He just doesn’t like the reminder of the gulf between them.
He pulls the sweater over his head, and when he finishes straightening the sleeves, Andy is holding out a cup of coffee, his face back to normal. In his other hand is an enormous percolator.
“I put in milk but no sugar,” Andy says. “Why are you laughing?”
“You realize that percolator could have held three times as much water as your fancy soup holder.”
Andy shoots him a scandalized look. “Like hell I’m getting my coffee maker dirty.”
“But you don’t care what happens to your soup thing, which probably cost fifty— You know what, I can tell from your face you’re about to tell me that it cost more than I pay in rent and I really don’t want to know what your soup heirlooms cost.”
“Nick, my life and my health depend on this percolator. We both know that. But I will literally never use that soup tureen. Well, maybe after I’m married. Maybe Emily really likes soup and French porcelain. Stranger things have happened.”
Nick takes a sip of coffee to hide his expression. He’s unaccountably glad that he has his sweater on. “When you and Emily get married, huh? Have you asked her?”
“Not yet.” Andy scuffs his toe on the floor like some kind of kid. “Soon, though.”
“I’m happy for you.” And Nick is. He really is. If he’s jealous, it’s probably only a faint pang, and he’s been through worse.
***
November1958
“One of the cops took it,” Nick says.
“Could have been a bookkeeping error,” Andy points out.
“A bookkeeping error that makes fifteen manila envelopes disappear from the police evidence safe, along with twenty thousand dollars cash and a couple of handguns?”
“Could have been one of the civilian clerks.”
“Could have been little green men.” Nick throws his hands up, exasperated.
“Look, we both know it was probably a police officer, but Jorgensen will have a stroke if you even suggest printing the names of the cops, even without any insinuation that they were at fault.”
“I know.” Nick throws his pen onto the desk. That evening, they filed a depressingly basic article stating the bare facts and repeating the police commissioner’s promises to get to the bottom of the missing evidence. “What kind of bullshit is it that they put this statement out at five on a Friday afternoon?”
He gets to his feet and begins pacing. The newsroom is relatively quiet, only a handful of reporters on the night desk. Without the usual steady thrum of voices shouting into telephones and the clatter of typewriter keys, it seems deserted, eerily silent. Someone has turned off a few of the overhead fluorescent lights. He can hear the hum of a vacuum cleaner somewhere else on the floor.
Nick knows that getting the NYPD’s hackles up is playing with fire. He already worries that any man he talks to is a plainclothesofficer waiting for the right moment to arrest him—something that happens to queer men every goddamn day in this city. Nick would be done—fired from theChronicle, exposed to his family, thirty days in jail. He doesn’t need to paint a target on his back by pissing off the force as a whole.
The thing is that Nick hates the cops and he’ll happily play with fire if that’s what it takes to chase down a good lead. If Nick gets burned, it’s not like it’ll matter to anyone but himself.
“Twenty cops were working in the office that day,” Nick says.
“Twenty cops were working when the items were discovered to be missing,” Andy corrects, because he’s doggedly accurate about news for someone who, at any given moment, has about a fifty percent chance of being able to accurately tell you the date. Nick supposes it’s because he was basically raised in newsrooms, but maybe it’s in his blood. Now when they go out to cover a story together, Nick isn’t babysitting Andy. Andy’s pulling his weight and then some.
