And now, that interview…
“Oh, Challa, they are most excited that you are coming!”
I’m in the back of a long, blacked-out Mercedes, sitting in a leather seat that makes me think of bath water that is exactly 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit: I am floating, even though gravity remains the big daddy law of physics. Up in front, Fritz Perlmutter, the Brotherhood’s ancient butler is behind the wheel, his driving style somewhere between Max Verstappen and a little old lady. Which is not a divide you’d think one person could straddle.
Then again, Fritz is extraordinary.
“Challa?” He glances up into the rearview mirror, worry pulling his wrinkly face up into his forehead. “They are looking forward to your visit.”
I drag a smile out of my anxiety. “Thank you.”
Not the right response exactly, but he’s trying to make me feel better, and that’s what I’m grateful for. The truth is, the Brothers are not going to be glad to see me—well, not all of them, at any rate. And I’m not really in a big hurry to see them, either.
It’s not because I don’t love them. I do. I’m even a little in love with a couple of them (purely in an author/secretary/reporter kind of way). And it’s not that I don’t see them regularly enough in my day job as their scribe. It’s more because this visit is a full circle thing, and I’m the kind of person that doesn’t do full circle/profound emotional shit. If I’m for real, I think I work as much as I do specifically to avoid doing things like this.
I’d rather be busy in the moment than reflective over the years.
“I have the ginger ale you like,” he says as he slows down. “Canada Dry, not Seagram’s.”
While he pilots us into a gentle left, he doesn’t use a turn signal and the Masshole in me approves.
“I can’t believe you remember.” Of course he remembers. “You’re very good to me.”
“I wish you would let us serve you a proper meal.”
Not going to happen. I’m nauseous, but at least my only choice of soda may help with that.
The car’s Wonder Bread suspension absorbs a couple of bumps and now we’re going slower. I look out the window next to me and can’t see a damn thing. Between the night and the tinting, I’m locked in like I’ve shut my eyes. And given that I’m already sick to my stomach, I’mnotchecking the front windshield.
We’ve just entered themhisthat protects the mansion up on its mountain, and that stuff will make even the strongest constitution feel like the flu’s coming on. It’s a reminder, not that I need it, that for however much I know about this world, I’m not a part of it. I’m just another person looking in from the outside.
You with the shoes, out of the pool—
“I’m sorry?” Fritz says as he glances up again. “You wish to swim?”
As he looks concerned again, I shake my head. “Oh, sorry, that’s just a saying.”
“The pool was closed down just last week.”
I don’t ask him why it was opened at all as that seems rude. But the reality is, the Brotherhood doesn’t live up here anymore. They’re down at the Wheel, underground in the midst of Caldwell’s suburban ring of housing developments, hiding, as always, in plain sight of the humanity they’re not all that fond of.
Old habits die hard, though, especially for thisdoggenwho keeps all trains running at all times. And maybe he hopes they’ll come back here. Or maybe he doesn’t care where they live as long as he gets to take care of them and he’s covering his bases. That’s probably it.
“The nights are getting cold,” I remark. Because yup, people do talk about the weather when they’re feeling awkward.
“It is pumpkin spice season indeed!”
I’m very sure he’d be just as cheerful, no matter the month: It’s hot toddy hour! It’s mint julep o’clock! It’s iced tea time!
The tilt of the ascent starts, and as the headrest comes up against me, I find myself wondering how many times I’ve seen people go up and down this road in my mind. I have such a clear picture of the asphalt lane, and the way it winds in and out of the thick trees, and how it dumps out onto the county road. For no good reason other than I’m locked in the past, I think of two specific trips.
The first is Rhage and Mary, in his purple GTO on Route 22. It’s a scene out ofLover Eternal, when he takes her for a ride in the night, and as “Dream Weaver” comes on, she leans out the window and just soaks in the freedom of flying, even though she’s still on the ground. I actually reached out to Gary Wright, who sings that song, for permission to use a bunch of the lyrics. He got back to me personally, which was a surprise because I was a total nobody. He said that his publisher owned the rights, and I’d have to go through them. He was so nice.
That moment, when Mary got to escape her diagnosis and leave all that horrible reality behind, I could feel the wind in her face, and hear the song in her ears, and hold on to her vivid sense of the incredibly beautiful male beside her behind that wheel. The racing, bracing drive in that kick-ass car was such a metaphor for everything that Rhage was bringing into her life, everything he was offering her, even if she couldn’t accept somuch of it. I remember thinking, as I wrote that scene, that it took me back to being a teenager and the buoyancy that comes from the blinders that youth puts on us.
So much we can’t see. Both the good and the bad.
The other trip down I remember is when a couple of the Band of Bastards and Tohr, Blay and John Matthew are all in a box truck going down into yet another mess. I’ve always thought that Caldwell, NY, is like space in theStar Trekseries. Nothing good ever happens in that zip code, everybody always getting thrown back and forth in their seats as the proverbial spaceship is rocked by yet another crisis—
