Quabbin - 6. Chapter 6

I’d been to Denny’s office with Cameron before. He and Denny were friends, though Cameron was maybe ten years younger. Denny’s secretary, Gina, always greeted us as though our stopping by was the nicest thing that could happen. She’d offer us coffee, soda, candy, homemade cookies, then she’d go find Denny. “He’ll just be a minute,” she’d usually say. “Sorry you have to wait.”

“Right,” Cameron would answer, laughing. “When’s Denny ever been on time?” As Gina smiled and went back to work, Cameron would add, “He always has the prettiest secretaries. How’d I hire you?”

“Maybe it’s subconscious,” I’d once joked, earning me the expected whack in the arm.

This time, there was no Gina. Her office was dark, though its door was open. Cameron knocked, then walked us through to Denny. The place was unnaturally quiet. Normally, it had the feel of a party, but somehow a lot of work got done.

Denny was at his cluttered desk, his feet up on a pile of printouts. Seeing us, he killed the picture on his soundless TV and dropped his feet to the floor. The small room was white and modern. The business offices filled what had been a cafeteria in factory days, but ceilings had been lowered, walls paneled, and the tile was now heavily carpeted. Denny had no view, and maybe to balance that, the wall behind his desk was covered with pictures of him -- younger, thinner, grinning -- as he accepted various swimming awards. The actual medals overflowed nearby shelves.

“It is something of a shrine,” he’d told me, laughing, one afternoon. “I should be embarrassed. But it keeps the ladies coming.”

“You really were something,” Cameron had said, though he’d clearly seen the photos before.

“I was a kid. I’ll never work that hard again.”

Still, at forty-two, with a little added weight, a moustache, and slightly shaggy hair, he looked better than the wet kid on the wall.

“What’s up?” Denny said quietly. He moved from his desk and pointed us towards a leather couch. Then he sat in a chrome-and-leather chair. Cameron quickly told him what had happened in Grenon’s office. Denny listened without smiling, then he seemed to think.

“He wants you to play junior detective?” he asked.

Cameron only shrugged.

“If we wanted a real dick, we’d buy one.” Denny looked serious and sounded serious, but Cameron took the bait.

“I’m not a real dick?” he asked. Denny stared at him, then they both cracked up. I mainly grinned, knowing to keep my place.

“Sorry about Kohler,” Cameron soon added. “That’s hard.”

Denny nodded. “There’s no way Drew was supposed to die first.”

“You all right?”

“Would I tell you?”

Cameron shook his head. Then he and Denny were silent.

“Funny thing,” Denny finally went on, “is Drew knew a whole lot of people he probably thought were his friends. But they couldn’t wait to get out of his stuffy office and come down here. He couldn’t, either, tell you the truth.”

Cameron smiled, then, when Denny didn’t go on, casually offered, “We should be getting back.”

“No... nah, I’d only have to work -- or make work.” Denny glanced at his desk, then turned to us again. “I couldn’t stay home today… I tried, but my house was too depressing.”

I don’t know why. It was great house. Small and kind of ordinary, but on a lake in the woods. I’d been there a couple times, dropping things off from the Mill.

Cameron had hesitated. “Anything I can do…” he began.

“Nothing anyone can do,” Denny interrupted. “Not today.” He was standing again. “And I’m not sure what I want to do, really. One thing I always envied Drew for was his ability to concentrate.”

Cameron grinned, maybe to lighten Denny up. “I always wanted to be as smooth as he was.”

“Yeah, well... ” Denny allowed.

“He could have any woman he wanted.”

“He didn’t need any woman,” Denny said, laughing. “He had Eileen.”

“I’m sure you’d take her off his hands...”

“Like he would’ve let me… or let anyone…”

“Well, if you had his moves…”

Denny and Cameron suddenly looked at each other and stopped. I don’t think either of them had meant to start talking about Eileen Kohler. It just happened.

“Sorry,” Cameron said. “I didn’t realize…”

“No… hell…” Denny shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. If Drew was here, he’d be the first one to laugh...”

That was pretty much the bottom of everything today -- if Drew was here. If Drew was here, everything would be different. No one would be lost. No one would be wandering around.

Denny sat again, and he and Cameron talked for a while longer. But it was soon all about the Mill, and I’d been gone too long to easily follow. Instead, I found myself staring at the trophies.

“But you have to remember,” Denny was saying when I tuned in again, “I live fifteen miles from here and sometimes stay late. And sometimes… well… I have a couple drinks… So I’ve slept here -- that’s why I keep the couch.”

He pointed to the couch Cameron and I were sitting on.

“And sometimes… if I’m even more out of it and need a place to really sleep… Or if I’m not exactly alone...” He grinned. “Well, we all have keys to the Founder’s House.”

I laughed, pretty much to myself. So that’s how the couch stayed clean.

“And I’m not exactly the most conservative guy,” Denny went on. “So I’ve what? -- explored? abused? -- that house in ways it wasn’t exactly designed for. And let me tell you -- those tubs’re slick. Once I even had to limp into the emergency room at four AM, not exactly wanting to explain...”

Cameron was eating this up, though I wasn’t sure what to think. I knew it was just Denny trying to distract himself, though I wouldn’t have done it in that way. Fortunately, I was almost invisible.

“You guys ever do that?” Denny suddenly asked. “Take guys to the Founder’s House?”

Almost together, Cameron and I shook our heads. It cracked Denny up.

“Two little monkeys,” he said, laughing. “You both look so guilty, I could choke.”

“Nah,” Cameron protested. “I live close enough by. But the boy here... well, you know he lives with his dad… And he had all kinds of brothers and sisters, growing up, so he probably never had a private moment. So he’s in the Founder’s House every chance he gets…”

They laughed at that, and, for a couple of minutes, I was their football. But it was all right. I was getting paid. Still, their trying not to think about Kohler only made me think of him more.

I knew one thing -- I had to get that final picture of him out of my head. I didn’t know if Cameron and Denny were stuck the same way, ‘cause I didn’t know how they’d last seen Kohler. But I hoped the cops had at least gotten him out of that tub.

He’d just looked so helpless. It’s no wonder Mary Foti had screamed. Alive, Kohler was always so intense. He hired people like Denny and Cameron ‘cause they could handle that, plus make him laugh. In the tub, he was just pink and matted and twisted. You couldn’t tell who he was.

How do you forget that? How do you replace that image with thoughts of Kohler alive? And I hadn’t really seen him for over two years. This was almost the first time since I’d been back.

When I listened to Denny and Cameron again, they were talking about Bill Grenon. “It’s not that,” Denny was saying. “You know as well as I do that no one takes him seriously -- at least, not personally. But he’s a good manager -- and God knows he’s organized. Who knows what could happen?”

“What does the board think?” Cameron asked.

Denny smiled. “Why do you care?”

Cameron smiled right back. “Well, it’s my job, too… If the place suddenly goes under…”

“Bought out’s more like it,” Denny corrected. “We’re ripe for that now.”

“Is that what the board thinks?”

Denny was silent.

“Oh, come on,” Cameron joked. “You just had your hand down my shorts. Who’s being shy now?”

Denny laughed. “I don’t care… but I’m not worried. Bill’s mainly responsible for keeping us on track… As long as things go where they’re scheduled… as long as we keep making money and don’t get sued… well, the Mill can kind of run by itself...”

“Then they’ll make him CEO?” Cameron said.

Denny didn’t agree. “You want my opinion, the one thing Bill’s not stupid about is how stupid he is. He knows better than to compete, especially with anyone who can even halfway talk. He’s bright enough not to take that risk.”

“So they’ll bring in someone from outside?”

Denny said nothing. Then he admitted, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t want it?” Cameron kidded. At least, I thought he was joking.

Denny sighed. “Of course, I do... but I don’t think I have the weight. They pretty much see me as the local party boy... And, who knows, maybe I am… still am.” He grinned, but didn’t seem very happy about what he was saying. “I know one thing,” he went on. “This is something I never thought I’d have to think about. There was just no way Drew was going to die -- not before both of us retired. So it’s not like I’m losing something I planned on...”

Cameron let it go at that. We hung out a while longer, but mostly started picking apart someone Cameron had been dating. Even I could make jokes about that. Like Denny, Cameron didn’t seem ready to settle down. But Cameron wasn’t already divorced.

Back in our office, we stalled till lunch, broke, then pretty much did nothing all afternoon, till Larsen came in just before five. Then Cameron and I hit the gym. Sometime after seven, I called Dad, telling him to forget my dinner, and Cameron and I settled for bar food. He hit on a couple of guys while we played 8-ball, but I mainly watched. When he seemed to have snared one, I took off.

“He has a friend,” he called after me. “Where you going?”

We’d been through all that, and Cameron knew I wasn’t interested in anyone but Dane. And being home, being so close to so many places Dane and I had been, only made things worse. For about five minutes, walking to my car, I thought seriously about hitting the road again, losing another two years. One point of traveling was now I knew just where I wanted to go again, what I’d missed. And maybe, in another two years, Dane would be divorced -- it happened to a lot of people.

And what would I give him then? Another journal he wouldn’t like? Another journal he wouldn’t even read? Well, I had him there. I knew that, in the one night he’d kept the book, he’d read every word. There were traps in those pages. Places I’d rigged in case the damned thing came back. And Dane had tripped every one.