One Last Call Before Goodbye novel · Chapter 13 of 16

Chapter 13: Friday

Clifford drove us back to his apartment through the hospital's loading dock.

The reporter was still in the lobby.

We never saw him.

By Wednesday night, I couldn't eat anything but broth.

By Thursday morning, I couldn't climb the steps from his kitchen to his living room without stopping halfway.

Clifford watched me do it.

He didn't say anything.

He just started leaving a chair at the top of the steps.

Louise spent most of Thursday on her phone in the hallway.

She was calling her regulars one by one.

"No, I'm fine. No, don't go to that place on Steinway, they'll fry your ends. Give me a month."

She didn't have a month's plan.

She said it anyway, every time, to every one of them.

At lunch, Clifford came home with a white paper bag and a manila envelope.

He put the bag in front of me.

Chicken soup from the deli on the corner.

He put the envelope on the table.

"What's that?"

"The Foundation treasurer," he said. "The man with the white hair at my mother's dinner."

"The one who said it was a foundation check."

"He's the Foundation's treasurer. He's been on the board for twenty years." Clifford sat down across from me. "He called me this morning. He wanted to know why his books say check 4471 cleared."

I put my spoon down.

"Cleared?"

"Cashed. Five years ago. Two hundred thousand dollars. To you."

"I never cashed anything."

"I know. You have both halves." Clifford tapped the envelope. "So he wants to know who did. He's pulling the bank records himself. He'll be there Friday."

Louise came in from the hall with her phone against her chest.

"Say that again."

He said it again.

She sat down very slowly on the arm of the couch.

"She cashed her own check," Louise said. "And told everybody Coll did."

"We don't know that yet."

"I know that," Louise said. "I've watched that woman work for one week, and I know that."

That night, Louise went out to a motel near the hospital.

She said Clifford's couch was ruining her back.

She winked at me on her way out the door.

I threw a pillow at her.

Then it was just the two of us.

Clifford washed the dishes.

I sat on the counter next to the sink, because the chair at the top of the steps was too far.

He handed me each plate to dry, and I dried it badly, and he let me.

"You don't have to go tomorrow," he said.

"I know."

"Paul can speak. The treasurer can speak. I can speak."

"She said my name, Clifford. The Duffy matter. I'm the Duffy matter."

He turned off the water.

He stood in front of me, between my knees, with his hands wet.

The kitchen was quiet except for the refrigerator humming.

"When I was nineteen," he said, "I thought the worst thing that could ever happen was you leaving."

"And then it happened."

"And then it happened. And I lived." He dried his hands on a dish towel. "I don't think I'll live through the next one, Coll."

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