Strangled - Brian McGrory [5]
“Thanks, Tony. You’re like another father to me.”
My name, by the way, is Jack Flynn, and maybe, in fact, I am nuts. But before I could address that question, I had to consider another: Did I love Maggie Kane? The answer: Damned if I know, which may, in fact, be all the answer I would really need.
I mean, I must have loved her when I gave her that ring on Christmas Eve not even three months before, right? She cried, and all right, so did I, and not just over the price. We talked about the life we were going to make, the successes we would see, the kids we might have. And then when we went to bed that night, the last woman I thought of before I drifted toward a restless sleep wasn’t Maggie, the wife I was about to have, but Katherine, the wife I had until she died six years before.
Time to get over it, Jack, I kept telling myself these past couple of years. Move on, let history dissolve into the present tense, still there, flavoring life, but secondary to current events.
But this issue was academic. What I had in front of me — a wedding — was ominously more realistic. The only real question I was forced to address this day, it was increasingly occurring to me, was how the flying fuck was I going to get out of it?
Think, Jack. Think.
“Congratulations, Jack, we’re all so thrilled for you. We had started to think you were gay.”
That was Don, short not for Donald, but Donatello, another member of the daily morning crew stopping by the table to shake hands with the happy groom-to-be.
“Don, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am myself. Before Maggie came along, I was starting to think you had a nice ass.”
He gave me a funny look, like I had carried the joke one notch too far. He returned to his usual seat, me to my dilemma.
By the way, it’s worth pointing out that this wedding was to occur at 4:00 p.m. before a justice of the peace in a conference room of Boston City Hall. There would be no family, no friends, no witnesses, no music, no flowers, no cake, no garter belt, no bridesmaids, no groomsmen, no wedding gown, no tuxedo, no band, no nothing but me and Maggie Kane getting married and heading straight to Logan Airport for our flight to Hawaii and a lifetime of frustration and emotional confinement. In other words, the logistics were somewhat simple in all this. I really only had to inform two people of my absence — Maggie and the JP. But that seemed small solace at the moment. I needed to figure out how.
Think, Jack. Think.
I folded the paper up, having read only about six words of it. I left three-quarters of my cappuccino in the cup and half my bagel on the plate, and I headed into a future that suddenly seemed colder than the worst winter’s day.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said to Kenny on my way out the door.
“No, you won’t. You’ll be sitting on some island being massaged by native women and oversexed by your new wife,” he replied.
No, I’d see him tomorrow. I just wasn’t of the mind to correct him right then.
At eight forty-five on a Tuesday morning, the newsroom of the Boston Record, the newsroom of any big city daily newspaper, for that matter, is a pretty desolate place. Most self-respecting reporters are still sitting at home in ratty bathrobes chugging black coffee and chain-smoking cigarettes, wondering who they’re going to screw that day and how they’re going to deliver said screwing by deadline. Or maybe not.
When I walked into the Record, only the omnipresent and always nervous Peter Martin, the editor in chief, was in the newsroom, undoubtedly plotting that day’s coverage, micromanaging his underlings before they even arrived at work, stressing over events that had yet to occur. I knew he was in the room because about thirty seconds after I had peeled off my coat and taken my seat, he appeared at my desk like a squirrel approaching a chestnut.
“So today’s the big day,” he said.