The F-Word

Despite everything, that makes me laugh. “Coop. My man. I’m disappointed. Better still, I’ll bet the lady will be disappointed.”

I hear a woman’s voice. Coop answers, but his words are as muffled as hers.

“Five minutes,” he says into the phone.

“Make it twenty, and meet me at The Attic.”

“Done,” Coop says, and disconnects.

* * *

The Attic is one of those places downtown that’s halfway between a dive bar and a cocktail lounge. There’s lots of time-worn mahogany, a string of leather booths, and the lighting is dim. Maybe because of its location, it draws a mixed crowd. Financial hotshots in dark suits, professorial types with leather patches on their jacket sleeves, guys who spent the day working heavy equipment on some nearby construction site. It all comes together just fine. Nobody knows why, only that its regulars are content to leave things at that.

Cooper and I discovered this place when we were eighteen, both of us in our first years at NYU. Of course, discovering it wasn’t the same as drinking at it—we were three years under the legal age—but Coop knew somebody who knew somebody, and so did I. We both put out for phony IDs—except the bartenders at The Attic were smart enough to see right through our pathetic subterfuge. We tried to get in at least a dozen times and finally one night the bartender who’d pointed to the door most often told us to give it up, come back when we hit the magic number and he’d buy us each a round.

So we did.

See, our birthdays are only a month apart

and remember what I told you before? We’ve been friends damn near forever. Anyway, The Attic has remained one of our favorite places, especially when you need to feel, you know, relaxed. The music that blasts from the speakers is good, there’s always an interesting choice of beers and ale, and maybe best of all it’s not a pickup place.

A pickup place is the last kind of place I need this evening.

An old-timer named Charlie is behind the bar. He sees me as I come in and we nod at each other. He raises his eyebrows and jerks his chin at a couple of empty stools at the bar. I shake my head, point at a booth in the corner. I raise two fingers. Charlie nods again and a couple of minutes after I slide into the booth, one of the barmaids puts two large mugs of whatever Charlie has decided is the best beer of the night on the table.

I say thanks.

A second later, Coop sits down across from me. He reaches for one of the mugs, raises it to his mouth and takes a long pull.

“So,” he says, “what’s the emergency?

I look at him. “I never said there was an emergency.”

“You didn’t have to.”

He takes another swig of beer. I lift my mug and do the same.

“Sorry to have dragged you away from…whatever.”

Coop grins. “I was in the middle of an experiment.”

I grin back. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’d explain it, but it’s probably over your head.”

I nod. “Would I be right if I thought if had to do with DNA transfer?”

He laughs. Then his expression turns serious. “So, dude, what’s doin’? You sounded like something important was going down.”

I avoid the obvious joke. I mean, a couple of minutes of back-and-forth was great, but there’s no getting away from my situation.

I take a deep breath. Let it out. Take another…

“Jeez,” Coop says, “what in hell happened? One of those houses of yours fall down a mountainside or something?”

I don’t take him up on the chance to do our standard routine, which is him asking me why anyone would pay big bucks for a house built, as he puts it, in the middle of Nature’s Nowhere when Manhattan is out there, just waiting. It’s light comic relief and we both know it, but light comic relief isn’t going to do it for me tonight.

Another breath. In. Out. Then I lean forward. “You remember Bailey?”