The Pendleton Omens - 19. Chapter 19

I woke up a couple of times during the evening. Once to use the bathroom. Once to pull off my clothes. I wasn’t really tired, but I kept forcing myself back to sleep. Around ten, I thought about getting up. But mostly I wanted to talk to almost everyone in my life. To find out if what Owen said was true.

I didn’t think it was. I thought it was his idea. A straight guy’s version, minus the complications. From my view, I was one of the least selfish people I knew. Especially considering the complications. I never hated myself. I never hated Sharon. Sleeping around, I was always a careful, responsible adult. But from Owen’s view I still got it wrong.

All right, if I hadn’t married Sharon, she would have married someone else. And she might have been happier for more than twenty years. And if I hadn’t married Sharon, I might have met someone like Noah when I was twenty-two or twenty-three. And we might still be together today. But one of the things that made Noah love me was the man I was. I knew how to compromise, daily, moment by moment, and only occasionally even mind. I’d worked my entire life to stay low-key, maybe as a kind of camouflage. But it accidentally turned me into a very good man. Maybe I’d always been that guy and always would be. But the situation I put myself in helped.

I wanted to tell Owen that but doubted he’d listen. Or try and let himself understand. Even more, I wanted to talk to Noah. To hear what he thought. And I wanted to ask Sharon. I didn’t care if she told me I was wrong. But I needed to know if I’d hurt her as much as Owen said.

But I couldn’t call. It was one AM in Massachusetts. Only the self-centered idiot Owen thought I was would wake people at that hour. Especially to talk about himself.

So I wandered into the living room. All the lights were out, and it was mainly lit by the floods from the parking lot. There were no new messages on the machine, but there was an handful of them on my cell.

The last from Sharon was, “Well, it’s after eleven, our time. The news is over, and I haven’t heard from you all day, so I’m going to bed. I hope you’re doing well. I hope Scoot has turned up. But if he has, and you two are out celebrating, I’m going to kill you both. I’ll talk with you in the morning.”

The last from Noah, which came about an hour before Sharon’s, said, “I’m knocking off for the night. I’ve called you a couple of times and left more than a couple of messages. So you probably know what I’ve been doing all evening, maybe at fifteen minute intervals. I don’t miss you that much, but the dog does. And maybe I do, too.”

The final message was from Jamie, and there was only one from her. “Mom said she hasn’t heard from you all day, so I hope everything’s okay. I have a big paper due tomorrow, so I’ll probably be up all night. Well, maybe half the night. Till two or three at least. So if you want to call, as long as we don’t take up a lot of time, I could probably use the break.”

I dialed Jamie’s number, feeling like I shouldn’t. But I really needed to talk with someone.

“Hey, Daddy,” she said, and I realized Jamie would probably always call me Daddy. Just as Owen persisted in calling me Donny. Scoot had started calling me Dad somewhere in third grade.

“Hey, James,” I said, well aware it was a man’s name. That had started as a joke. Sharon had chosen Jamie, which we both liked. But Sharon’s parents insisted it was too informal. “Then we’ll call her James,” I joked, though I was the only one who did.

“You think she minds?” I once asked Sharon. Jamie was probably less than three. “I mean, she’s nicknamed for a president.”

“Or a king,” Sharon pointed out.

“I think it’s cute,” I admitted. “I just don’t know how she’ll feel about it.”

“Did you ever think about your name?” Sharon had asked.

“No.”

“And I never worried about mine. I took it as a present.”

So Jamie was named – though we gave in to Sharon’s parents by technically putting Jamison on her birth certificate. And Scoot was nicknamed when he misspelled Scott. He liked it because he didn’t know anyone else with that name. “There are lots of Scotts,” he claimed.

“How’s the paper going?” I asked Jamie.

“Almost done. I’m just fighting the bibliography. As always.”

“I just wanted to say hello.”

“Hello. Mom said you were missing, too.”

“No, just sleeping. The flying finally caught up with me.”

“She thought you were out with Amy.”

That made Jamie laugh.

“I probably would have been,” I admitted. “If I’d felt better.”

“Sure you didn’t call it off ‘cause Mom was getting jealous?”

“Is she really?”

“She thinks it’s weird.”

“Your mom sometimes thinks too much,” I joked. “But before we go off on that, you better get back to work.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got another minute. Any news about Scoot?”

“Nothing. I would have told everyone.”

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

“More of the same. Though I’m thinking of filing a missing person report. I don’t think I can find him alone.”

“Why not?”

“It’s rough. As I’ve told everyone. If there were just some activity on his cell phone, or his credit cards, or his bank account. But even his e-mail sits there dead. Some time around the first of last month, your brother stopped existing. And I can’t believe it.”

“Do you think something’s happened?”

“I know something has. I just don’t know what. And he may simply be off working, out of the country.

“Have you found his passport? Or can anyone tell if it’s been used?”

“His passport’s like his car registration. As much as I’ve been through his apartment, it should have turned up. So maybe the answer’s that he’s using it. I can contact the government, but I’ve held off.”

“Will they just tell you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had to ask.”

“Well, if they can tell you, then you don’t have to file a missing person report. It makes things sound so final.”

“But once I do that, other things are possible. It means we’re not the only ones looking for him. Though I’ll sure feel like an idiot if we file and he just walks in the door.”

“I think you should file, Daddy. You sound really tired.”

“I’ve just had a bad day.”

“I’m sorry.

“Yeah, me, too.”

“I’d love to talk,” she went on. “But I’ve really got to go.”

“I know. I love you. Good luck with the paper.”

“I’ll be fine. I love you, too.

When she clicked off, I felt a little better. Then I realized it wasn’t even midnight, and I’d had all the sleep I needed to get. I knew what I wanted to do. Get to the airport. Grab the first plane. Fly home. I still didn’t know what to do about Owen. Or what to think about work.

I’d followed Owen onto the police force. “Come on,” he’d said, “this is a great job.” And if Bryan Pendleton gave me my wife, then Owen Neland gave me my career. Which I really liked.

I thought about eating. And I thought about Noah’s dog, constantly wanting more. I tried to remember when I last ate and decided lunch. A burger at Solley’s. The Middle Eastern place was better.

I scrambled some eggs and made a sandwich out of them. I only had breakfast stuff in the apartment but didn’t feel like driving. I thought about taking a walk, but doubted it was safe. And the last thing I needed was to get mugged.

The more I thought about Owen, the angrier I got. He didn’t understand, and he didn’t understand, and he didn’t understand. But at what point didn’t I understand, either? And why did I still want Owen for a friend? Though I couldn’t remember when he hadn’t been. He was there from my earliest memories.

There was a point, well before Philip Haines, when I realized how good looking Owen was. And there was a point when it was just great fun to watch him. But he was always Owen, and I wasn’t going to fuck up our friendship by doing something he’d never understand.

He was a straight guy, with a straight guy’s love of women and not a lot of curiosity beyond that. He was right, I’d always kept my hands off guys. But maybe my practicing started with him as a kid.

So I’d lost a wife, who I’d loved. And I’d lost a best friend, who was angrier than I’d known. And I had no idea where my son was. And my daughter was going to be steadily busier with her own life. But I had Noah. Maybe he wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to me, because I’d had a lot of good things. But he certainly was one of the best.

And it was only midnight, and the one thing to be said about sex is it really passes the time. And I could get sex, easily, if not with one guy than another. I could shower and get to West Hollywood before the bars closed. I could wear Scoot’s jeans and one of his T-shirts, and I wouldn’t look bad for a guy my age.

But it wasn’t something I wanted to do. I didn’t want to make some guy grin because I had hair on my chest. Or because that hair happened to be a certain yellow. I knew what I had going for myself, and watching it repeated in Scoot and Jamie only increased its power. I was so much more sure of myself at forty-three than I’d been at eighteen when I got married. And if I was sneakier, or sleazier, I was still the better man.

And if I was a better man, then Owen was wrong. Flat out. Or at least ninety percent.

I did take a shower, and did pull on jeans and a T-shirt. Then I added Scoot’s army jacket, a baseball cap, and running shoes. And I walked for two hours. It might have been dumb, but I didn’t see any danger. Up Van Nuys past Victory to Van Owen. On Van Owen east to Hazeltine. Hazeltine south to Houston. Then Houston home. Then I went to sleep again. But not before I wrote Owen a long e-mail telling him what a shit he was. Which I deleted.