Godspeed

by Nickolas Butler

  “What’s the weather look like for next week?” Cole asked.

  Bart scanned through dozens of stations until he settled on the Weather Channel. They watched without exchanging a word. The five-day forecast looked mild for late November, but on that final, fifth day, the forecast showed a huge blizzard moving into the mountains, with nothing but heavy snow behind it for the following several days. The meteorologist smiled as he swept his arms across the weather map, pointing to locations expected to receive extremely high amounts of snow.

  “Folks,” he said with a grin, “after an exceedingly warm and dry early autumn, ski resorts around these parts will be rejoicing soon, because the real powder’s on its way. If you’re a skier, then you’re about to be in heaven.”

  Bart shut off the TV. Now his feet were tapping, yes, but his fingers were clawing at his arms, too.

  “Dude,” Cole said, “stop it, man. Your poor arms. They’re gonna be all scarred after this.”

  Bart snorted.

  “What?” Cole asked.

  “You,” Bart said. “We been buddies a long time, Cole, but let’s face it, you don’t give a shit about my health. All you care about is this fucking house. And if we’re near the finish line, it’s because of me, okay? It’s because I been out there, day and night, busting my hump. Yeah, I’m gonna have scars after this house. Show me yours, huh? Show me your fucking scars. What the hell have you given?”

  “You need to eat something, brother. You’re tweaking. We need to get you some food and some sleeping pills. Something to chill you out.”

  And then Bart started crying, rocking back and forth in his chair, like a little boy. “I can’t stop moving,” he said. “My body won’t stop moving. Feels like I’m fuckin’ shaking apart.”

  “What can I do, buddy?” Cole said. “Just tell me. Tell me how I can help you.”

  Bart stood and began pacing around the room. Then he all but leapt toward a lamp standing beside his bed and frantically removed its shade, began unscrewing the bulb.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Cole asked, but he knew the answer as soon as the question had left his lips: Bart was looking for a way to make a pipe, any pipe he could, as he now explained, and there was a trick he’d once seen performed at a party where someone jury-rigged a lightbulb into a makeshift pipe by removing the metal base and filament and then placing meth into the remaining glass.

  “Come on—stop it,” Cole said, reaching for his friend’s hands.

  The bulb dropped, paper-thin glass exploding all across the parquet floors.

  “Get the fuck away from me,” Bart snarled. “I ain’t your damn prisoner.”

  But Cole seized Bart in a bear hug and in that moment felt his friend’s fragility, the muscle and brawn he’d melted away as the drug sizzled his every last synapse, his very veins on fire, this state of habdabs. He squeezed Bart all the tighter, and felt his friend fall apart again, relenting, wrapping his arms around Cole now and giving in to that tough love gripping him.

  “I wish we hadn’t done this,” Bart said. “I mean, we were doing all right. Weren’t we?”

  “We’re almost there,” Cole whispered, rubbing Bart’s back and shoulders. “You just—can’t give into this. We’re so close now.”

  “Yeah? ’Cept I’m afraid I might not make it,” Bart said. “I’m so afraid of letting everyone down.”

  “You won’t,” Cole said gently. “You can’t.”

  Cole gently pushed Bart away, but he stayed right there with him, stayed close to him. Close enough to let Bart know for sure he wasn’t alone.

  “I hate this fucking drug,” Bart sighed roughly. “But I love it so much, too. I love it so damn bad.”

  Finally, Bart’s body began to calm just a little.

  “I’m going to order us some more food, okay?” Cole said. “And I might step out real quick and go back to my apartment. Get you some sleeping pills. You need to rest if we’re gonna finish this house. I know I’m tired. We just need to close our eyes a little while.”

  Cole called down to the front desk, placed another extravagant order of food, and then, before leaving, collected all the drugs, stowing them in a garbage bag he held on to tightly. Finally, on the off-chance Bart was still holding, he went through the room and unscrewed the remaining lightbulbs, placing those in the bag, too. He also searched the suite for any lighters or matches but found none, and then, satisfied, prepared to leave.

  “You’re literally leaving me in the dark,” Bart said.

  “Yeah, well, I just don’t want you to make a mistake. You just need to relax for a little while. You need to get your strength back.”

  “Well, man, kinda hard to make a mistake with no crystal to make a mistake with, you know?”

  Cole stared at him. “I’ll be right back,” he said, his fingers on the doorknob. “You gonna be okay?”

  Bart waved him away. “I’ll make it,” he said, one hand buried in a pocket where a single piece of glassy meth seemed to burn against his palm like a lethal promise. He’d snatched it while Cole was paying attention to Jerry.

  Cole closed the door and walked slowly down the hallway toward the elevator, and then, just as he was about to press the down button, he turned and slowly padded back toward the room, pressing his ear against the door to listen. Another thought rose in his mind then, like a bubble of crude oil, bursting black and toxic, and he felt somewhat sick the moment the thought expanded, its conclusions and repercussions taking form: Were Bart to die, say, from an overdose, or even sheer exhaustion, it would stand to reason that Teddy and he might well be able to split his bonus, and certainly that much more of the builder’s fee. He shook the thought away; just a moment of morbidity, a moment of human frailty and greed. Of course he didn’t want his friend to die.

  Hearing nothing inside the room except the steady babbling of the TV, Cole walked back down the hall, took the elevator to the lobby, hopped in his truck, and drove the several miles to his apartment, where he quickly snatched up some sleeping pills, some junk food, and toiletries: a couple of unused toothbrushes, mouthwash, floss, deodorant, soap. Then, considering Bart’s rapidly deteriorating teeth, he grabbed some apple sauce, pudding cups, ramen noodles, and a container of gummy multivitamins.

  * * *

  —

  Back inside the hotel suite, Bart paced the floor plan like a panther. He had, what? Ten, fifteen minutes at the most. Grinding up the crystal seemed risky; he didn’t need Cole finding any residual powder, and he also didn’t need his nose on fire, that feeling of a particularly hot crank burning your nasal tissues like you’d just snorted napalm.

  Soon his pacing brought him into the bathroom. He closed and locked the door, avoided looking at his reflection in the mirror, not wanting to see what he already felt. Sitting down on the toilet, he thought of a guy he’d known years earlier who liked, above all, to parachute his crystal—to wrap the meth in toilet paper and then eat it. Bart broke his only piece in half and swaddled the crystal in the soft tissue to his right. Something about putting the little package in his mouth reminded him of communion. He closed his eyes and took it, ate it.

  * * *

  —

  When Cole returned, Bart was sitting at the desk in the bedroom, a pad of paper before him, working out a list of their remaining tasks.

  Cole clasped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “You actually seem a little better, buddy.”

  “Yeah,” Bart said, feeling the magic course through his body again, like a supernatural power. “It’s not easy being without the stuff, but I figure if I can just cut back a little, I’ll be okay. Maybe come out on the other side, same as I ever was.”

  “Getting hungry?”

  “I could eat a little.”

  And so they passed the balance of the night as they would have almost twenty years earlier, eating food and watching TV and occ
asionally talking about issues of some import, but mostly just bullshitting, content in each other’s company. And yet, beneath the surface, always was the bleak anxiety that they were two men on a runaway train steaming toward a broken bridge, and below it, a canyon deep and dark enough to wreck their lives forever.

  23

  The falconer came down from Northern California grudgingly, and only, Gretchen suspected, because she was being paid a thousand dollars, plus lunch and mileage. She was a young woman, not that far removed from her college years, and Gretchen would have thought her thrilled to be in the city, thrilled to be the object of an older woman’s respect, or at least curiosity, thrilled to be paid for her time, like a seasoned expert. But this young woman, Abby Saunders, just seemed on edge, suspicious, even.

  “Here’s your fee,” Gretchen said at lunch, handing the young woman an unsealed envelope with two thousand dollars in it.

  “This is too much,” Abby said, running her fingers through the bills. “Lady, this is way too much. We talked about one thousand, plus mileage.”

  “No, keep it,” Gretchen insisted. “I’m so grateful you’re here.”

  The young woman held the envelope up and in front of her, as if it were a bribe she wanted out in the open, dirty money she made a point of not caring to touch. After several moments, she shrugged and slid the envelope into the backpack slung off her chair.

  No purse, Gretchen thought. Delightful.

  “Would you mind if we ordered?” Abby asked. “I haven’t eaten anything today.”

  Gretchen studied the young woman’s wide, sunburned face, the thick, brown braid of hair swept onto her left shoulder, the peculiar vest she wore, her worn blue jeans, and the hiking boots she’d proudly trekked into this upscale downtown dining room. Already, she had scarfed down two rolls laden with butter and gulped a Coca-Cola Classic, even as Gretchen sipped her obligatory pinot.

  “By all means,” Gretchen agreed. “Whatever you’d like.”

  Albert took their orders, hardly suppressing his upraised eyebrows and the curious expression on his old face. Gretchen returned his look with amusement. And what must he be thinking now? she wondered. That she had a mysterious daughter—a young woman who must look much more like her father, because where was the striking red hair or green eyes? Where was the thin build and sophisticated countenance? And, frankly, where was her father? Or . . . was this a young lover? No, no, no . . . That couldn’t be right. And yet, one of the waiters had whispered to Albert that money had traded hands. . . .

  Forty-five minutes later, after the young woman’s dessert course of Bavarian chocolate cake, Gretchen sipped an espresso, watching Abby fidget in her seat and work at her teeth with a plastic pick she extracted from a pocket Swiss Army knife.

  “The bird is with you?” Gretchen asked.

  Abby nodded. “Yeah, in my car.”

  “And you parked where I told you to?”

  Abby nodded again.

  “Let’s go, then,” Gretchen said.

  * * *

  —

  They stood on the top floor of the Century Building, where Abby set a three-foot-tall metal cage on the green metal of the HVAC unit. Abby donned a long, thick pair of leather gauntlets that stretched past her elbows before pulling a thick navy-blue blanket off the cage to reveal the falcon, blinking out at the bright, late-fall afternoon.

  Gretchen stood off to the side in a long camel-hair coat, a turquoise-colored scarf wrapped around her neck and oversize sunglasses hiding her eyes. She felt incredibly vital today, and strong, and she was grateful for the young woman’s presence when just about everything in her life had become more difficult: rising up and out of bed in the morning; toweling off after a shower; her commute to work.

  Abby removed the falcon from its cage, settling the bird on her forearm and immediately rewarding it with a scrap of meat.

  “What is that?” Gretchen asked.

  “What? The meat? Roadkill. Saw an opossum last night on the side of the road near my house. No sense paying for meat when I can get it for free.”

  Then, almost as if she were throwing the bird into the sky, Abby loosed the falcon in a single, smooth movement, and they watched it circle the tower and the spires of other downtown skyscrapers.

  “Say that I wanted to learn how to become a falconer,” Gretchen said after a few moments. “How long would it take?”

  Abby followed the bird’s flight.

  “Depends,” she said. “Is it just gonna be a weekend thing? ’Cause this is a lifestyle for me, lady. In the summer, I’m working my falcons ten, twelve hours a day. Protecting orchards and vineyards from birds stealing those crops. But I been at this since I was twelve years old. My daddy was a pheasant hunter and liked to work a bird dog and a hawk on his hunts. So, falconry’s my whole life, you know? I think if you’re just doing it part time, I dunno, might take you years, if at all.”

  “Years?” Gretchen asked.

  “Sure,” Abby said. “This bird and I have a relationship. We trust each other. You can’t just buy that or get it overnight.”

  The young woman suddenly wondered if she had not inadvertently offended Gretchen.

  “I mean, no offense, lady,” Abby went on. “You could totally do it. But it’d probably take you two years, minimal, working with a bird every night, and hard on the weekends. You’d also need a mentor, probably. Someone to show you the ropes. And it helps to live in the country, too. Let’s face it, you need a place to keep the birds.”

  Gretchen glanced down at the hem of her coat, lifting on the swirling wind. She was crying, stoically; no sounds, no drama, just the overwhelming realization that there wouldn’t be enough time for everything she wanted to do, all the things she still wanted to learn.

  Just then the rooftop door swung open, and two young male attorneys spilled out onto the roof, vape pens in their gloved hands. They came toward the two women, squinting through the sunlight just as the falcon returned to Abby’s arm and she commenced feeding him another scrap of roadkill.

  “Whoa!” one of the men said. “Check it out. An eagle.”

  Abby rolled her eyes, while Gretchen coughed into her fist and wiped away the tears that Abby had not even seen, so engrossed was she with her charge.

  “This is an American kestrel, actually,” Abby explained. “A member of the falcon family.”

  “That’s awesome,” the taller of the two men said, and then, “I’m Ed, by the way. This is Cory. We’re both in Litigation.”

  Abby shifted the bird to her left fist and shook their hands.

  “You work here?” Cory asked the falconer. “Haven’t seen you around before . . .”

  Abby snorted, startling the bird, then offered it another small bit of the dead opossum. “No,” she answered. Then, pointing at Gretchen, said, “She does.”

  Gretchen’s coughing had not abated, and she held up a hand, half in greeting, half in pardon.

  “That’s so frickin’ cool,” Ed said as he drew on his vape pen, a vanilla-scented cloud drifting over his shoulder like a strange white cape. “I wonder if we could do something like that . . . Up here, on the roof. Build a little enclosure for the birds. Come up on lunches. Before and after work. Train ’em to go after pigeons.” He slapped Cory on the meat of the man’s biceps. “We could do that, right, bro?”

  Gretchen’s cough intensified then, to the point that she was bent over, her shoulders wracked, and the tears of disappointment she’d just shed comingled with tears of actual pain.

  “Hey, assholes,” Abby said, “why don’t you ask your co-worker if she’s okay?”

  They both glanced at Gretchen, as if noticing her for the very first time.

  “I’ll get some water from the break room on twenty,” Cory volunteered.

  “About time,” Abby muttered, as she and Ed approached Gretchen.

  “
You okay?” Abby asked.

  Ed bent down on one knee, his right hand on Gretchen’s left shoulder, peering into the older lady’s face.

  “I’m fine,” Gretchen said finally, bringing herself up to full height.

  But a moment later, she felt as if a wind had caught her up and sent her toppling over the tower, because she fell into Ed’s startled arms.

  * * *

  —

  She awoke in St. Francis Memorial in a room without a view. No vistas of the Pacific Ocean, the Golden Gate Bridge, or the skyline. With the IV drip in her thin arm, the incessant beeping and humming of medical devices, the pale, institutional look of her bed and room, and the only half-muffled sounds of traffic, jackhammers, and sirens outside her bleak little window, she wanted only to travel to Wyoming as quickly as possible.

  “You’re dying,” Abby said, from a chair opposite the bed.

  “Yes,” Gretchen admitted, “I am.”

  “They thought I was your daughter, so . . . ,” the young woman said, “they told me everything.”

  Gretchen pushed herself up in bed.

  “I’m sorry,” Abby offered.

  “Not your fault,” Gretchen wheezed.

  “Okay, maybe I kind of pretended to be your daughter,” Abby admitted.

  Gretchen gave her a sidelong look of mild disapproval. “What did they say?”

  “They want to keep you here. The doctors were saying at least a week. Maybe more.”

  Gretchen shook her head. “A week, a month. What does it matter?”

  “Don’t you have anyone?” Abby asked.

  “No,” Gretchen said at last. “Look, you’ve done more than enough. You don’t have to stay here. I can take care of myself.”

  But Gretchen knew that this was not true. As her condition worsened, she would not be able to take care of herself. There would come a point when she would be too weak to prepare her own meals or to fetch her own medications; too weak, she feared, even to find the toilet in a timely manner, or to get herself dressed. She wondered if she could even summon up the necessary strength to visit her house out west, her last and final destination, as she’d so assiduously planned these last few years, ever since learning of her diagnosis, if not the cancer’s swiftness.