The 6th Target - James Patterson [90]
She was completely out — eyelids flickering, jowls fluttering, paws moving in some great doggy dream.
She didn’t even cock an eyelid open as I got all dressed up for my date with Joe.
Chapter 127
THE BIG 4 RESTAURANT is at the top of Nob Hill, across from Grace Cathedral. It was named for the four Central Pacific Railroad barons, is elegantly paneled in dark wood, staged with sumptuous lighting and flowers. And according to a dozen of the glossiest upmarket magazines, the Big 4 has one of the best chefs in town.
Our starters had been served — Joe was having apple-glazed foie gras, and I’d been seduced by the French butter pears with prosciutto. But I wasn’t so taken with the setting and the view that I didn’t see the shyness in Joe’s eyes and also that he couldn’t stop looking at me.
“I had a bunch of corny ideas,” he said. “And don’t ask me what they were, okay, Linds?”
“No, of course not.” I grinned. “Not me.” I pushed a morsel of hazelnut-encrusted goat cheese onto a forkful of pear, let it melt in my mouth.
“And after a lot of deep thought — no, really, Blondie, really deep thought — I figured something out, and I’m going to tell you about it.”
I put my fork down and let the waiter take my plate away. “I want to hear.”
“Okay,” said Joe. “You know about my six sibs and all of us growing up in a row house in Queens. And how my dad was always away.”
“Traveling salesman.”
“Right. Fabrics and notions. He traveled up and down the East Coast and was away six days out of seven. Sometimes more. We all missed him a lot. But my mother missed him the most.
“He was her real happiness, and then one time he went missing,” Joe told me. “He always called at night before we went to bed, but this time he didn’t. So my mother called the state troopers, who located him the next day sleeping in his car up on a rack in an auto-repair shop outside of some small town in Tennessee.”
“His car had broken down?”
“Yeah, and they didn’t have cell phones back then, of course, and Christ, until we heard from him, you can’t imagine what we went through. Thinking that his car was in a ditch underwater. Thinking he’d been shot in a gas-station holdup. Thinking that maybe he had another life.”
I nodded. “Ah, Joe. I understand.”
Joe paused, fiddled with his silverware, then started again. “My dad saw how much my mom was suffering, all of us, and he said he was going to quit his job. But he couldn’t do that and still provide for us the way he wanted to. And then one day, when I was a sophomore in high school, he did quit. He was home for good.”
Joe refilled our wineglasses, and we each took a sip while the waiter placed our entrées in front of us, but from the catch in Joe’s throat and a feeling that was growing in me, I’d lost all desire to eat.
“What happened, Joe?”
“He stayed home. We left, one by one. My parents got by on less, and they were happier for it. They’re still happy now. And I saw that and I promised myself I would never do to my family what my dad had done to us by being away.
“And then I looked at your face when I showed up last time and told you that I had a plane to catch. And everything you’ve been saying finally got to me.
“I saw that without meaning to, I’d done just what my dad had done. And so, Lindsay, this is the news I wanted to tell you. I’m home for good.”
Chapter 128
I HELD JOE’S HAND as he told me that he’d relocated to San Francisco. I was listening, and I was watching Joe’s face — full of love for me. But the wheels in my mind were spinning.
Joe and I had talked about what it would be like to be in the same place at the same time, and I’d broken up with him because it seemed we’d fallen into a way of talking more than forming a plan to make that talk come true.
Now, sitting so close to this man, I wondered if the problem had really been Joe’s job or if we had conspired together to keep a safe distance from a relationship that had all the potential to be lasting and real.
Joe picked up his coffee spoon and put it in his