DAY 455

“Seriously, dude?” Rudy says.

Taz stirs, shifts, opens an eye. He sits up with a groan, looks around the living room, down at the couch he’s slumped into. Rudy unwraps a tiny Snickers, chews with his mouth open. “You’ve got beds, you know.”

Taz looks for his boots.

“The head witch not here yet?” Rudy asks.

Taz has to clear his throat. “Guess not,” he says. “The little witch isn’t even awake yet.”

“Long night?”

Taz almost smiles, marveling. “I forgot it was Halloween.”

Rudy stops chewing. “For real?” he says.

Taz says something. An uh-huh, maybe, he’s not sure what.

“The costume party? I didn’t tell you about that? Me and Alisha got screwed, second place.”

“Only second? What were you?”

“I wanted to be a horse to her Lady Godiva, but she wouldn’t go for that.”

“Surprise.”

“She stuck with the livestock theme, though. I was a cow. She was a cowgirl.”

Taz holds up his hand before Rudy can elaborate.

Rudy reaches his mug out to him. “Here. You look like you need this worse than me, which is something, when I got up this morning, I would not have believed possible.”

“I had to go to the store last night, for candy.”

“Marnie make you?” Rudy says.

“Yep.”

“Good girl,” Rudy says, and unwraps another Snickers. “Least you got the good stuff.”

A car door thunks shut in the street, and they glance at each other. “Ready?” Rudy says, and Taz nods, though he isn’t even close. A toothbrush would feel great. But he heads for the door behind Rudy, is there when he swings it open, sees Lauren’s face, stricken looking.

He thinks maybe it’s only walking into Rudy so early on, but she says, “Ted, we forgot Halloween.”

“We did,” he says.

“How could I have missed all the decorations? The pumpkins?”

“Entranced,” Taz says. “Midge’s mad powers.”

Rudy holds out a Snickers for her.

“Marnie would kill us,” she says.

“Pretty much already did,” Taz answers. He steps back so she can come in, says, “Midge had a rough one, too many ghosts and goblins. She’s still out cold.”

His phone chimes in his pocket, the double, a text, and he says, “Already late, we’ll catch you tonight.”

“Another long one?”

“Just punch-list stuff. Should be short. And then, who knows?”

“I suppose I ought to start thinking of a return flight,” Lauren says. “Get home and knock down the cobwebs.”

“We can talk about it tonight.”

He follows Rudy to the truck, tosses him the keys, says, “Coffee first.” He’s pulling out his phone, looking for the text, collapses in the passenger seat as Rudy climbs behind the wheel, saying, “If you saw my night, you might be rethinking this driver decision.”

But Taz only sits staring at the phone, until Rudy starts up the truck, pulls out, takes a sip from his giant mug, and says, “What?”

Taz says, “Elmo.”

“She coming back?”

Taz reaches up, pats down the tangle of his hair. “It’s, I, she doesn’t sound like Elmo.”

“What do you mean?”

“She wants to know if we’re nearly done. If maybe I could come up to Helena.”

“Whoa ho!”

“No, says she needs help.”

“With what?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Well, call her.”

“Coffee,” Taz says, still staring at his phone.

At the cart, he doesn’t answer when Rudy asks what he wants. Rudy orders an XXL. Four shots. He studies Taz, says, “So, I couldn’t believe it, but Alisha did it, full-on nude for Lady Godiva.”

Taz says, “What?”

“She just doesn’t have enough hair for the role, you know?”

“Who?”

Rudy hands him the coffee, says, “Never mind,” says, “No power tools for you today.”

She doesn’t call. All day, he checks his phone, Rudy raising an eyebrow. He texts. Leaves one voicemail. Another. Resists, barely, a third.

He and Rudy finish the house. The owner pads the check a little, something he wants to wave in Marnie’s face. It’s Midge who’s earned it, he guesses, but still.

He passes the extra on to Rudy, who passes it back, says only, “Not a chance.” He’s never asked how Rudy exists, if the tower work is such a gold mine, if there’s a trust fund hiding somewhere, a drug cartel, and Rudy has never said.

As they stand in the foyer, loading the last of the tools, Rudy says, “Well, that’s that then. Give me a call when you got something else?”

“Right now,” Taz says, “there’s nothing even on the horizon.”

Rudy purses his lips, throws the extension cord higher up on his shoulder. “Nothing?”

“Marko maybe has—”

“I mean Helena. Nothing on the horizon there? She never answered?”

“Nope.” Taz starts out the door with the compressor, the broom.

“She in trouble, you think?”

“She would have said, right?”

They get into the truck. Rudy says, “Club?” It’s a tradition. End of job.

Taz taps his phone against his thigh, stares out the window.

He puts the truck into gear, rolls down away from all that work. Things he’ll never see again.

“You should maybe text her,” Rudy says.

“No answer.”

“Call?”

“No answer.”

“Well,” he says, putting a boot up on the glove box. “That doesn’t make it any easier.” A minute later, Rudy says, “Road trip?”

“And if it’s nothing? Me standing on her porch with my teeth in my mouth?”

“She’d do it for Midge and you in a heartbeat. Be here already.”

Taz is chewing on that when his phone chimes, the double, and he snatches at it, lifts it to read against the wheel. Rudy reaches over, steers.

“She says never mind. It’s nothing. She never should have texted.”

“Huh?”

Taz takes over the steering again, drives down the mountain. Wonders.