“You really haven’t changed, have you?”
“How’s that?” asked Edgar warily.
“Guy Wallasek gave you an interview on the basis of a pretty slight clip file, and what’s more gave you a job. Which, though Barba’s not Hawaii, I assume you want. Doesn’t that make you grateful?”
Edgar folded his arms and bunched into the corner, scowling to beat the band. It was a hatches-battened position he’d often assumed when he was fat. “Wallasek offered me a temporary post that could be ripped out from under me by your big, big, big friend any time he cares to show his face, an arrangement that would be intolerable to staffers. A string will pay squat. I was a sharp lawyer and I can write. I’ll do an ace job, and he’s getting a bargain. Why should I be grateful?”
Falconer shook his head. “So hard on people, Kellogg. You that hard on yourself?”
An honest answer was too complicated: that he hacked on other people as a substitute for hacking on himself, and it didn’t work. That he rushed to dislike others before they could dislike him; that Edgar’s hasty dislike veritably ensured they would indeed dislike him; that, alas, beating acquaintances to the antagonistic punch had never protected him from the ensuing sense of injury that he had apparently brought on himself. A simpler answer—that Edgar perceived himself as an island of underrated promise in a sea of undeserving incompetence—would sound iffy in the open air. “I call them as I see them. You said yourself that Wallasek’s relationship to this Barrington guy is fucked up.”
“I didn’t say that. Wallasek’s a good editor, and a decent man. He claims he doesn’t, but he misses the fray—being so smack in the middle when some corner of the world goes up in flames that the hairs singe off your arm. So he has a weakness for the inside track; any journalist does. As for Saddler? Wallasek nine-to-fives it, he’s bored, feels left out. Saddler blasts into town and they go out until all hours and get slammed and meet kooky people and get kicked out of bars and Wallasek feels plugged in again. A minor failing, if it’s a failing at all. Why not give him a chance? It’s not a bad policy. You’re a smart guy, Kellogg, but you can be so—savage.”
Edgar felt chastened. He didn’t like feeling chastened. “Good God, Falconer. You’ve gone and got sincere on me.”
Toby was rolling the bottom of his empty beer mug in contemplative circles. “I was actually surprised to hear from you. Not sorry, mind you. But surprised.”
Edgar wasn’t about to admit that he rang Falconer over his own dead body. “It had been a long time,” he submitted neutrally.
Falconer laughed. “It’s been nineteen years! And when I finally hear from you, it’s not because you want to invite me to your wedding, or talk about old times. You want a favor! That takes balls, boyo.”
To Edgar’s undying relief the gamble had paid off in spades, but the odds had been a hundred-to-one that Falconer would put in a good word for him. Most hacks would see Edgar as a wet-nosed neophyte, his designs on their vocation impertinent. The uncanny cordiality should have been a red flag: this was not the Toby Falconer of yore.
“Didn’t beat around the bush, either,” Falconer recalled wryly. “No small-talk.”
Edgar squirmed. “I hate that how’re-the-kids shit. No offense, but why should I care if your youngest is in the choir? You’d figure out that I was hitting you up for a contact soon enough.”
“Since Yardley, I haven’t even been on your Christmas card list. Weren’t you worried I’d brush you off?”
“Worried? I expected it. But I figured, what’s to lose? A little pride. Maybe when I was still raking in the bucks at Lee & Thole, losing face would have seemed like a big deal. In my newly influential career as a commentator on world affairs, I’ve sold my car, let my health-club membership lapse, and forgone the firm’s box at Yankee Stadium. What’s next? Among a host of other luxuries, dignity is expendable.”
Falconer shot a wry glance at Edgar’s wrist. “I see you’ll sell off your dignity before you’ll pawn your watch.”
Parting with the $1,500 diving watch would have amounted to the ultimate admission of defeat. “A present for passing the bar, from my mother. Call me a sap.”
“Sentimentality from you, Kellogg, is a relief.”
Pushing himself, Edgar opened his mouth, and it gaped before the words came out—if strangely difficult to say, wildly important, and he was mortified that he’d almost skipped them altogether: “Anyway, um. Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“I’d never have given you the thumbs-up with Wallasek if I didn’t expect you were capable,” Falconer said good-naturedly. “The one thing I never doubted at Yardley was that you were smart, even if I wasn’t always too thrilled about what you applied your intelligence to—like, to locating people’s weak spots. Besides, I admit I had an agenda. I’ve got some rusty curiosity to satisfy. If I snagged you an interview with my editor, even the surly Edgar Kellogg might feel beholden enough to have this drink.”
Edgar sat up in surprise. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”
“How could I forget? Some of the things you said about me senior year. They got back. Maybe they were meant to.”
Edgar had contempt for New Age confessionalism, and wasn’t going to enjoy this. He shrugged. “Kids can be mean.”
“You’re not a kid. You’re still—”
“You think I’m mean? That’s rich.”
They looked at one another squarely for a beat. “I don’t get it,” said Falconer.
“How do you think I was treated, as a two-hundred-forty-pound punching bag?”
“You ever going to let that go? I thought junior year at least we treated you all right.”
“Like with Wallasek. I’m supposed to be grateful.”
Falconer threw up his hands. “It’s just—what happened? One minute you were hanging out with us twenty-four-seven, and the next, bang, opposite side of the dining room. You passed me in the hall like a parking sign. And then all this stuff starts filtering back, that I’m on a ‘power-trip,’ that I’m a fag, that I get other guys to write my papers—”
“You did—”
“We all did! And that I dyed my hair.”
“I never said that.”
“You might as well have! What got into you?”
“I liked you,” Edgar said with difficulty. “I was disappointed.”
“I don’t—”
“I overheard you, okay?” Edgar’s raised voice carried over the dead bar and drew a glance from the sniffling Miss Loneliheart, who looked relieved that other people had troubles, too. “I overheard you,” he continued quietly. “In the locker room, you and that crowd, you didn’t realize I was in the shower. I turned off the water and stayed behind the wall. I hadn’t been aware that my nickname was ‘Special K’—”
“Come on, we were always razzing somebody—”
“This was different! You mimicked me, like, ‘Oh, no, I can’t have that chocolate chip, it has a whole eleven calories! A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!’” Edgar twisted in his seat. “And you made fun of my stretch marks.”
“Edgar, if anything, a little teasing only meant you were included. It was the zeros we didn’t talk about you should have felt sorry for.”
Edgar looked up sharply; this was the Toby Falconer he remembered. “It got worse. You said I was always hanging around you with goo-goo eyes. That it was like having some girl on your hands, or a lost puppy. That every time you turned around I was yapping at your heels—wanting