“Hello, Evan. How are you this evening?”
Evan didn’t say anything, as though he were considering how to respond. “I’m well, thank you, sir. Just waiting to hear what might be on my agenda for tonight.”
Dave chuckled. “Well, it’s Friday, so we’ll be busy. You’ll have multiple encounters to handle tonight. I hope you’re
up
for the challenge.” Dave shook his head. He usually didn’t like to stoop to bad sexual innuendo.
“Yes, sir. Usually not a problem, but the Cialis you keep me on is good insurance for busy nights.”
“Perfect.” Dave explained that Evan would soon be visiting a businessman from Salt Lake City who was staying downtown at the Four Seasons. “You should be able to get some nice wine and a room service dinner out of this one.” Then he described a couple who lived along the part of Lake Shore Drive known as the Gold Coast, in a vintage five-bedroom condo with city and lake views. One was an older man who enjoyed watching his younger lover get serviced by someone equally young and hot. And finally Dave said, “And then we have our Mr. Williams. You remember Mr. Williams, don’t you?”
Evan was quiet. “Yes,” he said very softly.
“Speak up. I can barely hear you.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I remember Dan.”
Dave smiled. “Of course you do. The two of you are becoming thick as thieves. What is this, your fifth encounter with him?”
“Seventh, actually.”
Dave paused. “You haven’t been seeing him outside of work, have you? You know that’s expressly forbidden.”
“Of course not,” Evan replied.
“Very good. Tonight I’d like you to put the plan we discussed into action. I think Mr. Williams is good for a bit more income than we have been getting from him thus far. You recall the plan we discussed, Evan?”
Again Dave was met with a long silence at the other end of the phone. Dave prompted, “Evan?”
“I heard you.” Evan sucked in a breath. “Do we have to do it with Dan? I mean, how about Chuck Parelli or Manny Blake? Either of them would be easy for me.”
“Are you balking? Are you trying to usurp my leadership? I’m sure neither of those things are true.”
“No, no, of course not. I was just thinking—”
“Don’t think, Evan. Just do. You are not paid to think. You are paid—and paid handsomely, I might add—to use your manly charms to bring pleasure to our clients. And to take my direction. Tonight you will have a discussion with our Mr. Williams, and I fully expect a positive outcome.”
“Okay,” Evan said softly.
“I know this is difficult for you, but it’s best for the business, and what’s best for the business is best for you, my dear. You see that, don’t you?” Dave grinned. “I only want to take the best care possible of my boys.”
“Of course,” Evan said, but the implication was just the opposite.
“So, around midnight, you hightail that sweet little bottom of yours up to Kenilworth. The wife is traveling this weekend, in San Francisco, I believe.” Dave chuckled. “Oh, the irony! I will phone you in the morning to discuss how the night transpired.”
“Okay.”
“Enjoy yourself. I know you care about our Mr. Williams, in spite of my very good and common sense advice to not become emotionally involved with our clients. But the heart does not always listen to the head. And what you’re about to do, Evan? It’s in his best interests.”
Dave couldn’t help but detect a note of acid in Evan’s voice when he replied, “If you say so, sir.”
Dave ignored it. “I do. Now, good night.” Dave disconnected.
Night had come on, full force.
WREN SHOOK
a Marlboro Light out of the box and lit it. Mournfully he looked inside the cigarette pack and saw there were only half a dozen left. Now, with the combination of being unemployed and cigarette prices rising up to over ten dollars a pack, Wren realized he might finally have the impetus he needed to quit once and for all. But now he craved the solace the nicotine and tobacco would provide. He dragged deeply on the smoke, plopping down on the front stoop of the apartment building where he and his mother, Linda, lived.
He watched his exhaled smoke as the wind carried it upward, listening to the rustling sound that same wind initiated in the leaves of the big maple tree in front of the three-flat redbrick building he called home. This part of the Far North Side neighborhood, Rogers Park, was pretty quiet. Wren’s building was about eight blocks west of the lake, where traffic, both automobile and pedestrian, was much heavier. But out here on West Lunt, the apartment buildings and homes were modest and the neighborhood less transient than those closer in to the water.
It was also cheaper, which was a big factor for Wren and his mom, who had seldom had more than the two proverbial nickels to rub together. Wren had grown up with his mom and with her had traveled around the city’s North Side, living in a dozen or more different apartments. When they were flush and Linda could hold down a good waitressing or bartending job, they lived large in a two-bedroom, splurging on luxuries like cable TV and, if they were lucky, an outdoor space like a balcony or patio. In leaner times, though, Wren could recall having to share a tiny cockroach-infested studio with his mother on Devon Avenue—and even then it had been hard for his mother to meet the rent.
Currently Linda tended bar downtown at a very small, very chic boutique hotel on Oak Street. It was sort of a career high for her, and the salary and tips she brought in allowed Wren to live comfortably with his mother and to have his own room.
The pair had grown close over the years, in a much different way than the usual parent/child relationship. As Wren grew into puberty and young manhood, he had become more of a friend and confidante to the woman he called his mother. Little wonder, since his mother was only sixteen years older than her son and the two of them had been mistaken more than once for siblings or, worse, boyfriend and older girlfriend. Linda had given Wren his ginger hair and slight frame, and these attributes, along with a constellation of freckles across her button nose, kept Wren’s mother looking even more youthful than her forty years.
Their unique closeness was also bolstered by the mystery of Wren’s paternity. Wren had tried without success, especially when he was a little boy, to discover who his absent father was. If he was still alive, if he still lived in Chicago, what prevented him from seeing his son? But Linda was always evasive, never really revealing any information to her son about the man who had fathered him.
Into puberty, Wren had assumed his mother had slept around as a teenager, the same as he slept around. He didn’t hold it against her and could see how she simply didn’t know who the father was. She might have been embarrassed, but Wren couldn’t have cared less if his mother had plenty of lovers and one-nighters. The randy Wren even admired her a little for it.
That was until he discovered, snooping among the personal papers she kept in one of her dresser drawers, a yellowing newspaper clipping from the
Chicago Sun-Times
that detailed a rape case that had gone to trial just a couple of months before Wren was born. The “unidentified and underage” victim had been abducted and raped on her way home from Senn High School on Chicago’s Far North Side.
Linda had gone to Senn. And the dates were right.
Wren recalled how he had sat down, weak in the knees, on Linda’s chenille-covered bed with the clipping in his hands. Why else would she have kept this if she was not, in fact, the rapist’s victim?
Wren had looked at the picture of the man accused of the crime, a guy named William Sanders, who had worked as a janitor at the same high school Linda attended. He was an older, doughy-faced man who looked harmless enough, with his shock of unkempt salt-and-pepper hair and unremarkable features. But there was an intensity in his brown eyes that Wren thought looked familiar, because he had noticed that same intensity when he looked in the medicine cabinet mirror.
Wren had folded the clipping back up, being careful to return it to approximately the same place he had found it in a stack of papers that included old bills, their current lease, some tax returns, and his birth certificate. His heart had ached for his mother, and he had experienced a pang of profound guilt as he thought of the countless times he had asked her about who his father was.
How painful it must have been for her!
Wren had closed the drawer and hurried out of his mother’s bedroom, never mentioning to her what he had found out. He didn’t want to hurt her, and he knew it
would
hurt, reliving the crime, what she had endured. It must hurt, actually, every time she looked at him, the memory fresh in the eyes of his father.
Yet she hadn’t aborted him or given him up for adoption. Wren assumed that’s what many other women would have done, especially when they were high-school-age girls. She had kept him close to her through the years, raising him with love, nurturing, and protectiveness, often going without nice things for herself so Wren could have things like new winter coats, new shoes, school supplies, and medical care.
Like his father, his grandparents had been conspicuously absent from his life. A gut-wrenching thought occurred to him—had Linda’s parents thrown her out because of her pregnancy? Even though it was the result of a rape? That was almost too cruel for Wren to comprehend.
It made him love his mother that much more that she had kept him, despite what must have been his horrifying origins and the cost to her.
And now, as he took a last drag on his cigarette, his heart ached a bit at the prospect of going inside and telling Linda he had not only lost his wallet but his job. His customer service gig helped pay the rent on this, their nicest-ever home, and he wasn’t sure how they’d make do without his biweekly paycheck.
He flicked the butt into the gutter and went inside.
“THERE’S LEFTOVER
spaghetti and meatballs in the fridge,” Linda called out by way of greeting when Wren unlocked and opened their front door.
He shut it behind him, trying on different ways of telling his mom the truth about his current employment status. It would be a big deal, because she really did depend on him. More than once she had told him, in a kindly way, that “When the time comes and you want your own place—and you will—just give me a little advance notice, huh? I’m all for pushing you out of the damn nest, but I’ll need time to find myself a cozy studio or one-bedroom.”
“Just nuke it for a couple of minutes and it’ll be good to go.”
“I remember how to heat up food, Ma.”
He made his way from the little entryway into the living room, where Linda was curled up on the couch watching
House Hunters
. Although her dreams of home ownership might never come true, she never tired of being a part of others’ house searches. She pointed at the screen.
“You should see how little you can get in San Francisco for the money. I don’t know how anyone can afford to live there. Chicago is bad enough.”
Wren sat down at the opposite end of the couch and watched as a young man toured a closet-sized apartment that would run him close to half a million dollars. He just didn’t know how people did it. It was hard enough, when they moved, just to come up with the security deposit and a couple of months’ rent, let alone buying a place.
Linda nudged him with one of her bare feet. Wren grabbed her foot, noticing she had recently painted the toenails a shocking shade of emerald green, and began massaging, working his fingers up and down her sole.
“Oh, don’t start what you can’t finish. I did a twelve-hour shift today, and I cannot tell you how good that feels.” She threw her other foot onto Wren’s lap. “How was your day?”
Wren continued to massage Linda’s feet, hoping this simple tactile pleasure might soften the blow. “Ma, I got news.”
“Good news I hope,” Linda said, her eyes still glued to the screen.
“Not so much.” Wren didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, staring at the TV screen and not really absorbing what was going on.
Linda removed her feet from Wren’s lap and sat up. She reached for the remote on the coffee table, turned the TV off, and then lit up one of her own cigarettes. She exhaled the smoke into the air-conditioned air. “Spill it.”
“I lost my job,” Wren sighed. “And to make the day that much more perfect, I lost or had my wallet stolen too.”
“They let you go? I thought you were doing so well there.”
“I was. I was. Too well, and I think that was the problem.” Wren explained how he was taking too long with his calls, helping the customers sort out their problems.
Linda shook her head. “That makes no sense.” She smoked thoughtfully for a minute. “Well, we’ll be okay. You can probably find something else soon, huh? And you get unemployment benefits too.” She looked at him. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah, Ma. I didn’t do anything that would prevent that. And I got a couple weeks’ severance.” Wren winced as he thought of the live check his boss had given him. It was folded up in his wallet. He shook his head. Yet another problem to sort out.
Linda got up and went into the kitchen. Wren heard her open the fridge and then the beeps signaling she was programming the microwave. The microwave began to hum. In a couple of minutes, she returned with a plate of spaghetti and meatballs sprinkled with Parmesan cheese, steaming. She set it in front of Wren, along with a beer in a chilled mug.
“You didn’t have to do that. I could have done it myself.” Wren took a bite of pasta.
His mother sat back down on the couch, regarding him. Wren stopped eating long enough to look over at her. It was then he noticed the worry on her face, the way it creased the area between her eyebrows, her mouth open as if she was poised to say something but was still considering how to say it.
“What is it, Ma?” Wren swallowed some of the beer and pulled another smoke from the pack, lit up. He pushed the plate away, no longer hungry. There was a sudden tension in the air, and Wren didn’t think it was because of the news he had just dropped.
Linda looked away, down the hallway where their two bedrooms were, staring for a long time, as if she were contemplating what color would look nice on the walls.