Ryan’s evening had never held much promise, and soon it soured completely. Alone in the room, he tried first to locate the motel’s movie channel, then a decent cable movie, and finally a game, or even a game show. His peregrinations yielded nothing better than scrambled porn, and that gave him a headache after half an hour or so. He switched back to a replay of the 1973 Super Bowl. I could be drunk right now, he thought with a pang of regret. By rights I should be. Instead I’m waiting for some freak who may not even show up and has probably spent the day calling Tanzania on my dime anyway.
With a sigh, Ryan reached into his bag and withdrew a wellthumbed magazine. After a few weeks of study, he believed he was making progress. Magic tricks, he had learned, could be performed with bar materials and were good icebreakers. These would be useful, surely. All across the country, he thought, men were doubtless getting laid courtesy of the levitating olive, the exploding straw. Making fun of her drink, apparently, was also a simple introductory device. And he had learned some basic principles that would stand him in good stead. Pale gray suits looked cheap; shoe shines were essential; video games helped concentration. Ryan absorbed this wisdom. One to two drinks a day were said to aid memory; white wine was recommended to avoid sulfites. Ryan drank beer in larger quantities and soon forgot this one. Women taking birth control pills preferred more masculine-looking men. Ryan nodded sagely. But what was the use of that?
There was a disturbing amount of information that was irrelevant or simply unhelpful. Ryan didn’t care about the twenty-five greatest movie
scenes. He had no interest in readers’ stories of embarrassment; he had enough of his own. He had neither the time nor the inclination to learn the distinctions between various shoes and the occasions they fit. And some of it was worse than irrelevant; it was dispiriting. The magazines didn’t just want to help him pick up women. They wanted to help erase his flaws.
This was puzzling. Ryan seldom thought about his flaws, and when he did it was with the kind of affectionate indulgence afforded the miscreants among a beloved flock of grandchildren. The magazines, however, were concerned with things Ryan had never considered. There was, for instance, the matter of the nasolabial fold. Before the magazines had instructed him to the contrary, Ryan hadn’t known he had a nasolabial fold at all. It sounded like something a girl had, which one might admire surreptitiously from appropriate angles on the beach, and later, if lucky, be allowed to kiss or lick or fondle. But the facts were other. The nasolabial fold, he had learned, was the crease running from the nose to the corner of the mouth, and he did have one, or would in a few years, and then would apparently have to pay to have it eliminated via laser resurfacing. This was daunting news. At times Ryan thought that whatever expertise he acquired from his study was unlikely to be enough to balance out the erosion of his self-confidence.
He shook his head and set the magazine aside, lamenting the absence of a minibar. More reading of strategic literature was not the answer. There had to be a simpler solution; even in the complicated exile that was post-collegiate life, there had to be a better way. Something like the clever method he’d used to locate his lost phone, a strategy he felt it was past time to try again.
He walked to the desk and picked up the telephone. Distracted by the noise of the television and the effort of remembering his number, he didn’t hear the door open. “Where are you, you son of a bitch?” said Ryan Grady.
The familiar tune sounded directly behind him. Huh, thought Ryan, perplexed. What followed was a very strong blow to the back of his head, but Ryan didn’t experience it that way. For him, it was a burst of light and a sudden, brief moment of extraordinary alertness. As his legs buckled under him, he had the curious impression that things were moving unusually slowly. This allowed time for another thought, which would likely have been expressed as “What?” or even “Fuck!” But as it
happened, it wasn’t expressed at all, for Ryan was out well before he hit the floor.
He awoke to Katja bending over him, her hand on his neck feeling for a pulse. Also to significant pain. “Fuck me,” said Ryan sincerely. He collected himself. “But maybe not tonight. I have a headache.” He smiled at his remarkable composure. Then he moved his head, and the room moved back, and he decided it might be better just to lie still for a while.
“It sounds like he’ll be okay,” Katja said, her eyes following the ambulance out of the motel parking lot. “They’ll probably keep him overnight for observation, but we’ll have him back first thing tomorrow.” She turned to Mark. “Who do you think could have done that?”
“I don’t know,” said Mark. “I’m getting the impression that Hubble’s lawyers aren’t too popular around here.”
“Yeah,” said Katja. “But I don’t think that was it. Someone really went through your room. Someone who was looking for something.”
“Ryan said he was meeting someone,” Mark remembered. “And Macey’s firm knows we’ve been doing document review. You don’t think they could have had anything to do with it, do you?”
“I doubt it. They’re plaintiffs’ lawyers, which I know makes them the scum of the earth from our perspective, but they are lawyers. I think our discovery tactics are pushing the bounds of what a court will accept. They couldn’t very well think they’d get away with beating someone up, even if it was Ryan. Anyway, if they wanted documents, they would have gone to Harold’s room. That’s where the files are. Someone was really interested in yours.”
“I don’t know,” said Mark. “Nothing in it has impressed me so far.”
“Yeah,” said Katja. “Well, anyway, you’d better be sure to lock the door.”
“You’re on the next flight home,” Harold told the assembled group the next morning. “All of you.”
“What about you?” Katja asked.
“I’m going to wrap things up here. I’ll be back in a week or so.”
“Is it safe?”
“Evidently not,” Harold said sharply. “That’s why you’re going home.”
Katja sighed. Despite himself, Harold felt a surge of happiness at her concern. Ryan Grady gingerly touched his bandaged head. Some vacation, he thought. Well, I’m damn sure billing the client for last night. Time and a half, probably. Combat pay, isn’t it?