Billy Summers

‘Sure.’ Billy tucks his digest into his back pocket. Archie and his bosomy gal pals. There’s an essay waiting to be written there, too. About the comfort of haircuts and attitudes that don’t change. About Riverdale, and how time stands still there.

‘Then let’s go,’ Macintosh says. ‘Nick’s waiting.’

2

Macintosh drives. Logan says he’ll sit in back because he’s short. Billy expects them to go west, because that’s where the fancy part of this town is, and Nick Majarian likes to live large whether home or away. And he doesn’t do hotels. But they go northeast instead.

Two miles from downtown they enter a neighborhood that looks lower middle-class to Billy. Three or four steps better than the trailer park he grew up in, but far from fancy. No big gated houses, not here. This is a neighborhood of ranch houses with lawn sprinklers twirling on small patches of grass. Most are one-story. Most are well maintained, but a few need paint and there’s crabgrass taking over some of the lawns. He sees one house with a piece of cardboard blocking a broken window. In front of another, a fat man in Bermuda shorts and a wifebeater sits in a lawn chair from Costco or Sam’s Club, drinking a beer and watching them go by. Times have been good in America for awhile now, but maybe that is going to change. Billy knows neighborhoods like this. They are a barometer, and this one has started to go down. The people who live here are working the kind of jobs where you punch a clock.

Macintosh pulls into the driveway of a two-story with a patchy lawn. It’s painted a subdued yellow. It’s okay, but doesn’t look like a place where Nick Majarian would choose to live, even for a few days. It looks like the kind of place a machinist or lower-echelon airport employee would live with his coupon-clipping wife and two kids, making mortgage payments every month and bowling in a beer league on Thursday nights.

Logan opens Billy’s door. Billy puts his Archie digest on the dashboard and gets out.

Macintosh leads the way up the porch steps. It’s hot outside but inside it’s air conditioned. Nick Majarian stands in the short hallway leading down to the kitchen. He’s wearing a suit that probably cost almost as much as a monthly mortgage payment on this house. His thinning hair is combed flat, no pompadour for him. His face is round and Vegas tanned. He’s heavyset, but when he pulls Billy into a hug, that protruding belly feels as hard as stone.

‘Billy!’ Nick exclaims, and kisses him on both cheeks. Big hearty smacks. He’s wearing a million-dollar grin. ‘Billy, Billy, man, it’s good to see you!’

‘Good to see you, too, Nick.’ He looks around. ‘You usually stay somewhere fancier than this.’ He pauses. ‘If you don’t mind me saying.’

Nick laughs. He has a beautiful infectious laugh to go with the grin. Macintosh joins in and Logan smiles. ‘I got a place over on the West Side. Short-term. House-sitting, you could call it. There’s a fountain in the front yard. Got a naked little kid in the middle of it, there’s a word for that …’

Cherub, Billy thinks but doesn’t say. He just keeps smiling.

‘Anyway, a little kid peeing water. You’ll see it, you’ll see it. No, this one isn’t mine, Billy. It’s yours. If you decide to take the job, that is.’

3

Nick shows him around. ‘Fully furnished,’ he says, like he’s selling it. Maybe he sort of is.

This one has a second floor where there are three bedrooms and two bathrooms, the second small, probably for the kids. On the first floor there’s a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room that’s so small it’s actually a dining nook. Most of the cellar has been converted into a long carpeted room with a big TV at one end and a Ping-Pong table at the other. Track lighting. Nick calls it the rumpus room, and this is where they sit.

Macintosh asks them if they’d like something to drink. He says there’s soda, beer, lemonade, and iced tea.

‘I want an Arnold Palmer,’ Nick says. ‘Half and half. Lots of ice.’

Billy says that sounds good. They make small talk until the drinks come. The weather, how hot it is down here in the border south. Nick wants to know how Billy’s trip in was. Billy says it was fine but doesn’t say where he flew in from and Nick doesn’t ask. Nick says how about that fuckin Trump and Billy says how about him. That’s about all they’ve got, but it’s okay because by then Macintosh is back with two tall glasses on a tray, and once he leaves, Nick gets down to business.

‘When I called your man Bucky, he tells me you’re hoping to retire.’

‘I’m thinking about it. Been at it a long time. Too long.’

‘Truth. How old are you, anyway?’

‘Forty-four.’

‘Been doing this ever since you took off the uniform?’

‘Pretty much.’ He’s pretty sure Nick knows all this.

‘How many in all?’

Billy shrugs. ‘I don’t exactly remember.’ It’s seventeen. Eighteen, counting the first one, the man with the cast on his arm.

‘Bucky says you might do one more if the price was right.’

He waits for Billy to ask. Billy doesn’t, so Nick resumes.