“You sure you don’t want to call first?” Courtney asks, pulling our latest rental car into a metered parking place across from the boarding school.
“I want to surprise her,” I say. I check my fresh shave in the rearview mirror. Rub a comb through my hair for the fiftieth time this morning. Rub some lint off of my shoulder sling.
“You look great,” Courtney says. “Don’t be nervous.”
I step out of the car into the brisk air.
“I look like a public service announcement for unsafe working conditions,” I say, gesturing with my free hand to my cast, and the cut over my right eye which, seven weeks later, still hasn’t healed thanks to a secondary infection.
He locks the car and pulls his new flannel shirt tighter over his skeletal frame. We got enough cash from pawning Sampson’s shit to justify a shopping trip at REI.
“What’s the plan?” he asks.
“If anybody asks, we’ll say we were invited to give a guest lecture on making the wrong life decisions.”
We cross the street and walk straight into campus. Don’t even have to hop a fence.
It’s no Saddleback Correctional Facility.
Yet, I’m at least as nervous as if we were breaking back into the prison. Haven’t seen Sadie face-to-face for five years, and since then we’ve probably only had three phone conversations that lasted longer than fifteen minutes.
Just chill. You’re her dad. She loves you.
I think about the first ten years of her life, the two of us in that slummy apartment on the Lower East Side, me dropping her off at elementary school every morning then scrounging for freelance PI work. Can’t believe that ended up being the golden age.
Courtney and I walk shoulder to shoulder across an immaculately groomed lawn, me trying to fight my limp, Court anxiously scanning his surroundings like this pristine campus is a war zone. We get a few looks from the uniformed kids rushing between classes, but nobody stops us.
It’s eleven thirty, so we find a picnic table with a view of the cafeteria and wait for lunch.
“Beautiful facility,” Courtney says, surveying the colonial red brick buildings, carefully trimmed hedges, expansive green lawns.
“Nice to know my money was footing the landscaping bill,” I sigh. “Thanks for coming here with me.”
“Well, you couldn’t really drive across the country wearing that.” He motions to my sling. “And it’s not as if I had a lot of other pressing opportunities.”
He taps his fingertips against the wooden tabletop and tries to smile. He’s tried to hide it, stay upbeat, but he’s nowhere close to forgetting about Mindy.
I pull the comb back out of my sling and brush the hair out of my eyes.
“You’re fine,” he reassures me.
At noon there’s a campus-wide bell, and students pour from the buildings, laugh and shriek their way toward the cafeteria.
Courtney removes a pair of binoculars from his acrylic bag. I rip them away from him before he can use them.
“Are you nuts?” I say. “Are you trying to get on the sex offender registry?”
I look from face to face, a little part of me scared I won’t even recognize her. They’re all wearing the same navy blue, and from thirty feet away I’m not even sure about some of their genders.
But when I spot her, there’s no doubt in my mind. I feel like I’m having the air squeezed out of me.
“That’s her,” I say, mostly to myself, and leap from the bench, bound across the lawn to her, ignoring the pain in my thigh. I push through the pubescent swamp, eyes focused only on the prize.
“Sadie!” I say. “Hey!”
I catch up to her right outside the cafeteria. She’s with four friends, two girls and two guys. For a moment I can’t talk, just gawk at her stupidly. When I left her she was a wide-eyed kid. Now she’s halfway toward womanhood. She’s only a head shorter than me, and she holds herself with a sort of confidence she definitely didn’t learn from me. Her hair is darker than I remember, and short. A little curly. Her brown eyes though are exactly the same.
“Sadie,” I say. “Hey. It’s me.”
Her friends look between me and her with confusion. She’s quiet for a second, then—in that voice I know so well from her answering machine—“What happened?” she says, looking at my cast and the wound over my eye.
“Got into a little tussle,” I grin. “But you should see the other guy. Did you get my messages?”
She nods quickly.
“Wait here, I’ll be right back okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Sure.”
I stand outside the cafeteria while laughing kids swarm past me, a few minutes pass, and then they’re all swallowed by the dining hall. I wait outside, in the suddenly silent courtyard. Courtney is sitting at the same bench, observing. I give him a thumbs-up, as I anxiously shift my weight from foot to foot.
My heart leaps as I see someone leaving the cafeteria, and then drops when I see it’s not Sadie, it’s one of the boys she was with.
“Hi,” he says, approaching me, clearly a little nervous. “Um, sorry, Sadie said she can’t talk now.”
I swallow.
“Should I come back later? After classes?”
“Um . . .” He clasps his hands behind his back. “No, I don’t think so. Maybe just call her later or something.”
I’m a little dizzy. I stare at him levelly.
“What did she say exactly, champ?”
“She . . .” He hesitates. “She said to tell you not to come visit her here. That’s all.”
I feel my face tightening. I force myself to nod.
“Are you her boyfriend?” I ask.
He shrugs.
“Yeah. Guess so.”
“What’s your name?”
“Russell.”
“Alright Russell,” I say. “Be nice to her.”
I can’t keep it together anymore. Turn and walk back to Courtney, vision blurry with tears. I collapse across from him at the picnic table, facedown on the wood tabletop.
“Frank . . .” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
I stay facedown for a few long minutes, trying to hide from the world. Finally compose myself enough to sit up and face Courtney.
“I can’t . . . .” I shake my head, sniffle. “I have nowhere to go.”
He scratches his cheek.
“I know what you mean.” Courtney frowns seriously. “It will be okay.”
I can’t bring myself to respond.
“I suppose what I meant to say is, well, to borrow a metaphor from Senator James Henry Sampson, it could well be that life is a complex, but intentional and perfect, oriental rug. But that pattern isn’t visible when you’re an ant right on the surface.”
“Right,” I croak. “Sure.”
Courtney has the good sense to shut up for a bit. Folds his arms and stares off into the distance. I close my eyes, listen to the giggling coeds, hissing of sprinklers.
“I’m flying tonight,” he says. “You’re welcome to join.”
I open my eyes.
“To where?”
“To look for work.”
I shake my head.
“Sorry Court. I’m done with that shit.”
He slowly rises from the picnic table, looks at me, eyes damp. Nods slowly, like he was expecting that answer.
“You looking for Mindy?”
For the first time I can remember, Courtney laughs.
“No, no . . .” He pulls a folded piece of paper, encased in plastic, out of his pocket. “I figure it’s only a matter of time before she comes looking for me.”
“What is that?”
“One page.” He smiles. “She’ll need it for the whole set.”
“Guess you’re not as dumb as I thought.”
He extends a boney hand to me, and I clasp it.
“It was good working with you again, Frank.”
“You too.”
“If you change your mind,” he says, “you know how to reach me.”
Then he drops his hand, turns, and I watch his storklike form recede, until he disappears between a pair of red brick buildings.