Thirty-Five

The light from my monitor splashed through my office and spilled into the dark apartment. Click and Clack were asleep. The Bruins weren’t playing. Nothing was left for me to do but poke around on the web and do research on PassHack. My screen displayed some old PassHack advertising, nothing recent; the company had dropped off the face of the earth. Tweeted:

Trapped in the dark midnight of the Internet #sleepwhereareyou

I stopped typing and listened to my silent condo. In the distance, a siren spoke of someone else’s emergency. A door closed. A mother yelled at her kid, “For the last time, go to bed!” I leaned back. My chair creaked. Silence. Darkness. Time for a drink.

I padded into the kitchen by the light of my monitor. Reached up over the fridge and pulled down a bottle of WhistlePig Rye, distilled in Vermont. Poured a triple or so of WhistlePig into a rocks glass, didn’t add any ice. Took a slug of rye, felt the burn of the attack, and let the strong rye esters travel through my nose. The alcohol nibbled at my consciousness, rounding the harsh edges.

I slumped in front of the computer. Old PassHack information glowed on the screen. Jarrod started it, Anderson invested, he invested again, then it crapped out. I saw no mention of selling the assets. No product discussions. No news stories. Nothing.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. There was an address, PassHack’s last known location. I copied the address into Evernote, decided to visit it the next day, and gave up for the night.

I sat in front of my browser, doing the random clicking that has replaced mindless TV watching. Clicked on Gmail: nothing. Clicked on Stumbleupon: nothing. Considered joining Facebook again, decided against it again. Went over to Twitter and found a random article retweeted by a celebrity, read it while ignoring it—something about a movie star who had sworn off drinking. The fool.

I considered World of Warcraft, decided against it. I didn’t want to be that guy, sitting alone in his apartment, drinking rye whiskey and killing orcs. Opened the holiday pictures I had taken with my old phone. Watched a movie of Maria unwrapping her sled. “Finally!” she had said.

The rye dug into my brain, slipping between the folds, creating fuzz. I watched Maria open the sled again. Sophia sat on the couch, cradled in Sal’s gigantic arm. Sal’s hand covered Sophia’s thigh, her hand rested over his. They grimaced in unison as the sled emerged from the wrapping.

I flipped through other pictures. Sal raising a glass of wine. Sophia, in an apron, serving the lasagna that had followed the soup and would be followed by the ham. An old crèche sitting at the base of a Christmas tree, Jesus lying in his bassinet, Mary praying next to him. Joseph lying on his side, having been knocked over by a large gift. Maria horsing around on an iPad, Sal yelling at her to put that damn thing away and be social.

The video had it all: the food, the gifts, the uncles and aunts. It was A Child’s Christmas in Boston. No videos of me, of course. I was behind the camera, reveling in the chance to be part of a family again. Recording all so we could look at it in the future. I hadn’t realized that I was capturing Maria’s last Christmas with her mom, that the family was about to be blown apart. If I had known, I’d have taken better videos.

I poured myself more rye and looked for something technical to do, something to occupy my hands before I drank myself into a coma. My Droid lay on the counter. It still had its stupid “Droid” ringtone. Picked up the phone, poked around in Settings, surfed the web, bought a ring tone: the Bruins’ foghorn. Whenever the Bruins score a goal, the Garden blasts a foghorn. It’s one of the world’s best noises and it made a great ringtone.

My ringtone foghorned. It was as if the gods themselves wanted to test my phone. I answered: Angie.

“Hello.”

Nothing.

“Hello.”

Snuffling sounds, maybe breathing.

“Hellooooo?”

Pocket dialed.

I broke the connection.

The rye whiskey worked its magic, slowing my thinking, calming my stomach, giving me the chemical illusion that all was right with the world. I knocked back the rest of the liquor and padded off to bed.