The Distinguished Guest Read Online Free Page B

not to look at the scarred toilet bowl, the wisped, dusty hairs curling along the
baseboards, the scummy sink. The toilet’s flush was wheezy.
    When he came back, Thomas was standing over the message machine and an adult voice was telling him to make an appointment with someone. A beep off, then on, and a breathless girl left a long
message, mostly preface: “Hello, ducks. If you get this message before Saturday, okay, go ahead, pay attention to it. If you don’t, you’re out of luck, you’re a loser, what
can I say, why aren’t you
ever
home, you should check this machine more often, and the message is . . . ” and she announced a party, gave the place and time.
    Alan was standing by the open front door. “Can we go, Thomas? I don’t want to be late.”
    “Just a sec.”
    Another voice came on, wanting Thomas to join him at Wally’s for a beer. “Miss you, pal,” it said, and clicked off. How long since he’d been home, Alan wondered. And if
he wasn’t sleeping at home, where, with whom, was he sleeping?
    None of my business, he reminded himself.
    Now there was someone else announcing his name, calling for Thomas’s roommate. Thomas fast-forwarded the machine.
    “Thomas, I’d like to go. You can do this when you get back. We’re late, in case you didn’t hear me earlier.”
    Thomas flicked the machine off. His face was closed. The child, scolded. “Right. Let’s hit the road.”
    On the way to the airport, Alan asked Thomas about the trio. He had stayed in Boston this summer specifically to work in it, with an elderly professor who was retired except for this annual
effort. As Thomas had told Gaby and Alan earlier—they had wanted him to get a job this summer—people killed each other to get into this group.
    “It’s good,” he said now. “It’s interesting.” And he talked, for a few minutes openly and with enthusiasm, about the music they were working on, about the old
man, about the differences in musicianship among the three players.
    A silence fell. Alan looked quickly over at Thomas. His face had fallen into repose, into the brooding gravity that lurked behind what Alan thought of as the Thomas-mask, the smiling,
happy-go-lucky good guy.
    “Have you talked to Ettie lately?” Thomas asked abruptly.
    “Your mother did, a few days ago. He’ll try to get home one weekend while Gran is staying.”
    Thomas nodded, rocking his whole body a little along with his head. “Yeah, he told me. I just wondered if you knew.”
    “You guys talk often?”
    Thomas shrugged. “A medium amount. I mean, what’s often?”
    This irritated Alan. Everyone knew what
often
meant. He didn’t answer.
    “How long
is
Gran staying?”
    “I can’t say. We’re waiting, essentially, for some old geezer to die.”
    “The guy whose apartment she’s going to move into?”
    “Even further down the line than that.
That
guy is in a nursing bed, and the woman who lives now in what will be Gran’s apartment needs that bed. The nursing bed. But she
can’t move there until the old guy kicks the bucket. So to speak. And he was supposed to—he was in intensive care and on the way out—but a miracle of modern medicine pulled him
though.” On the still river, just a few boats, their sails sagged and luffing. Alan smiled at Thomas. “So now we’re all praying for a different kind of miracle.”
    “So it’ll be like, what? A year?”
    “God, no! A couple of months, at the most. They’ve virtually promised.”
    “Well, that’s not bad, Dad.”
    “Easy for you to say.”
    “Come on. She’s cool.”
    “Do people still say
cool
?”
    “I don’t know. I do, apparently.”
    They settled into silence. Alan was thinking of Ettie—Etienne, his other son. Although he was two years younger than Thomas, he seemed older. He was short, like Alan’s wife, Gaby,
and compact like her too, and perhaps that was some of it. Unlike Thomas, Ettie was comfortable in his body, coordinated and graceful and a terrific