The Good Neighbor

by William Kowalski

  Colt stiffened, wincing as his arm sent him another reminder of the accident. “Yessir?” he said.

  “First of all, I’m happy to say that my launch date has been moved up,” Forszak told him. He got up from his chair and went to one of the windows, pulling the shade up so he could look out over Sixth Avenue. Colt squinted in the brighter light. Across the street he could see the windows of the building opposite, and be yond it there were clouds drifting over the city. “I’ll be leaving next week.”

  “Next week?” Colt echoed.

  “Yeah. So I’m afraid my visit to your new country place is gonna hafta wait until I come back.”

  Colt had forgotten all about that, even though it was planning for this visit that had been the beginning of the end of things, when one thought about it; for he had wanted to have the ceme tery gone before Forszak and his wife showed up. His apology seemed so ridiculous that it was all he could do to keep from laughing.

  “Well, we’ll just have to reschedule, sir,” he said. “My, uh— Francie will be disappointed, but she’ll understand. Under the cir cumstances. Congratulations.”

  “I can hardly wait,” said Forszak. “I may not look like it, but I feel like I’m ten years old again. I’m leaving for Russia in two days. I’ll be gone for at least a month.”

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  “A month. I see.”

  “I got confidence things will run smooth while I’m gone. The other partners will be in and out to keep an eye on things.”

  “Yessir.”

  “There is something else, which I been meaning to bring up with you for some time,” Forszak said. “I was waiting until just before my launch date to talk to you about it. It’s something I meant to see through before I left, because let’s face it—there’s a chance I won’t come back, y’know.”

  “You mean—you might stay in Russia?”

  Forszak smiled. “No, Coltie,” he said. “I mean there’s a chance I could die on my way to the moon. Or on the moon. Or on my way back from the moon. Space travel is still in its infancy, Colt. We’re like the pioneers setting out across the plains. Things go wrong all the time.”

  “Oh,” said Colt. “I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “And in case I don’t come back, I wanted to make sure that you get the chance to become a partner yourself. I want to get the paperwork done before I go. So that no one else can interfere.”

  Colt leaned back on the couch and stared at Forszak in amaze ment. “You want to make me a partner?” he asked.

  “A junior partner. To start. You got all the right qualities, Colt. And, most important, you got the capital. You’ve been doing very well since you came here, and I know your habits. You have a few million put away by now, don’t you?”

  Colt stuttered, taken aback by the directness of the question. “Ah—in various forms, yes.”

  “How much are you liquid for?” “A—a couple million, sir.”

  “Would you be willing to reinvest that in the firm? And keep on doing what you’re doing, at a substantially greater percentage than you’re getting now? The rewards would be very great, Colt. No matter what the market does. There’s a correction coming along some time soon. Everybody and his grandmother knows

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  that. Maybe you want to wait until that has taken effect. But on the other hand, this offer might not be open then.” Forszak shrugged. “Depending on what happens to me.”

  “I understand,” said Colt. He was being offered something that every trader dreamed of—the most lucrative situation that ex isted, in fact. It was the chance to become disgustingly wealthy. If he played his cards right, he could double his money in the next five years. And double it again five years after that. And by then he would only be fifty years old. Coltrane had to smile. He had dreamed of this moment since he was eight.

  “I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a wunnerful opportunity,” said Forszak.

  “I agree, sir, it is,” said Colt. “So then I assume you’ll—”

  “Do you mind if I take some time to think about it?” Colt said.

  Forszak removed his glasses and blinked at the younger man several times.

  “Think about it?” he repeated.

  “Just—to consider all the factors,” Colt said. “To consider all the factors.”

  “I’ve been through a lot in the past week,” said Colt. “And to be perfectly frank, I’m not sure what I want right now.”

  “I see,” said Forszak. “Well, I gotta tell ya, I’m surprised.” “My wife wants a divorce,” said Colt.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Forszak appeared surprised by the new tack this conversation was taking.

  “Yeah. Well. She’s pretty pissed off at me for a lot of things.” “I see,” said Forszak.

  “I know you understand,” said Colt, getting up. “You told me about your kids, how you hardly talk to them. Let me ask you something. Was it worth it to carry things this far? To this level?” “My kids,” said Forszak. “Well, to tell the truth, Coltrane, I

  don’t really think—”

  “You chose to work your ass off,” Colt interrupted. “That’s fine.

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  I respect that. But now you have two kids who barely speak to you. And I was just wondering if you still feel like it was all worth it.”

  “Of course it was worth it,” Forszak said irritably. “What you don’t understand, young man, is that I came from nothing. Noth ing. I made all this with my bare hands. I started out on the street, damn it!”

  “I know,” said Colt. “Look, Mr. Forszak. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  “Well, it certainly sounds like you are!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that. It’s just that I— well, like I said, I’ve been doing some thinking. About all of this. This whole life. And—”

  “Aw, God,” said Forszak resignedly, sitting down at his desk and putting his feet up. “You’re having one of those moments.”

  “Sir?”

  “One of those you-can’t-take-it-with-you moments,” said Forszak. “And so you wonder what the point is, and whether there’s something more valuable than money. Is that it?”

  “Well,” said Colt, “I guess so. Yeah.”

  “I shoulda known this was coming,” said Forszak. “Look, Colt. I’m not your typical unfeeling businessman. I’ve thought about all these things many times. I did make an effort for my kids. I tried to be around them as much as I could, given the circumstances. And you know what? They’re a couple of spoiled little shits. They grew up the opposite of the way I did. They had everything in stead of nothing, and now they feel like nothing is enough. Me—I think to myself, well, that’s too bad, but I’m still here. I’m still Igor Forszak, and sometimes I’m still the little kid who came stumbling out of the camp more than fifty years ago, more than half starved to death and crawling with lice. And I still feel like I felt that day. You know what that feeling was?”

  Colt shook his head.

  “Wide open,” said Forszak, spreading his arms out in front of him. “Anything could have happened to me. That was the happi

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  est day of my life, and not because I was free. It was because I had absolutely nothing to lose, and I knew I was finally on my way back up. Because anything was going to be better than what I had just come from. Somebody coulda handed me a shit sandwich on rye and I would have been happy about it, because it was more than I had. You see my point?”

  “I think so,” said Colt.

  “That’s what all this has been about for me,” Forszak told him. “Not having lots of money. Just having that feeling. I never quite got it back again, but I’m still chasing it. That feeling like I could do absolutely anything I wanted, and that everything was some thing to be grateful for. I’m almost at the peak here, Coltrane. Al most at the top. Can you think of anything higher than actually going
to the moon? It’s the pinnacle of our civilization. It is the most advanced thing a man can do—to actually leave Earth, to es cape our gravity.”

  Colt was silent, looking at the floor. He could feel Forszak star ing at him, breathing heavily. Then he took some papers out of a drawer and laid them carefully on his desk.

  “You know what?” he said. “You’re at a crossroads here. I see that very strongly. So, you have some thinking to do. I’m gonna leave you these papers. I’ve already signed my part. You just have to sign yours. You don’t have to make up your mind right away. You can take them home with you and think about it for as long as you want. If you don’t sign them, you throw them in the fire. Understand? If you do sign them, you take them to my lawyer. His name is on the letterhead. He’ll fix everything.” Forszak gath ered the papers into a sheaf and handed them over. Colt rose and, after a moment of hesitation, took them.

  “This was what everyone was talking about,” he said. “There was a lot of rumbling before I got hurt. People knew something was coming.”

  “Oh, that,” said Forszak. “I dropped a few hints that we were gonna downsize. I like to do that every once in a while, through

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  the secretaries. You know, feed them false info and tell them to spread it around. Keeps people on their toes. Plus, it distracts them from the real rumors. Only way I can keep a secret around here.”

  “That’s a good one, sir,” said Colt.

  “True story,” said Forszak. “Now go away, if you please, I have a lot to do.” Forszak smiled again. “You’d be amazed at how com plicated it is to get ready for a trip to the moon. There’s a million things you have to bring, and you’re not allowed to carry any of them with you on the ship. So why bring them?” He shrugged. “Who am I to ask this? I just do what I’m told.”

  Colt held out his good hand, and he and Forszak shook. “Good luck, sir,” said Colt.

  “Thank you, Coltrane,” said Forszak. “Look up in the sky a cou pla weeks from now. Maybe you’ll see me waving.”

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  Heading North

  “You okay, man?” Michael asked Colt, as they stood on the curb outside, waiting for a cab. “Kind of a bummer about your

  friend, huh?”

  Colt remained silent. He struggled into his seat and allowed Michael to strap him in. Then Michael closed the door and got in on the other side. The driver half turned in his seat, waiting for di rections.

  “West Village,” Colt told him. “You okay?” Michael asked again.

  “I’m fine,” Colt said. “Would you stop asking me that?” “Was he a good friend of yours?”

  “We ate lunch together every day for more than five years.” “So I guess that means you liked the dude.”

  “Michael,” said Colt, “you have this amazing ability to make even the most profound events seem no more significant than a skateboarding competition. Do me a favor and either talk like a big boy or shut the fuck up. I’m serious.”

  “Whoa,” said Michael, hurt. “Sorry.” He fell silent for a time,

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  but then, his monkeylike mind having jumped into yet another tree, he spoke up again.

  “What did your boss want in there, anyway?” “Nothing,” said Colt.

  “Is that nothing as in nothing important, or nothing as in I should mind my own business?”

  “You’re starting to catch on,” Colt said.

  He was still holding the sheaf of papers that would make him a partner, if he signed them. How many times had he dreamed of this moment? Times without number—times beyond counting. He wanted to sign them, he really did. He even already knew that he was going to sign them. There was no soul-searching involved; this was the most important moment of his life. It was that sim ple. And yet there was something that was making him wait, and he didn’t know what it was. Something important. If it came just like this, he thought, would it be real? Was this the way it was supposed to be, or were other things supposed to happen first?

  Because, the thing was, even though this was right and good and the way it was supposed to be, there was something missing. And it was driving him crazy trying to figure out what it was.

  Maybe it was what happened to Joe. Poor Joe. He wondered what his last thoughts had been as he fell to the filthy floor of that subway car. Did he even know what had hit him? Probably not. He’d probably just been wondering what he was going to have for dinner, or trying to calculate how much he would have to earn this month to pay off his alimony and still have enough left over for himself. Wondering if he would have enough to buy Christmas presents for everyone. Joe had needs, both small and great, just like everyone else. And then his last glimpse of earthly life turns out to be the candy wrappers and discarded newspapers and half- empty plastic soda bottles under the seats of the subway cars. How depressing could things get?

  And then there was Christmas. Jesus, Christmas wasn’t too far away now, was it? It always seemed to come out of nowhere, and

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  Colt always just gritted his teeth and endured it until it was over. He hated Christmas with a passion. Just like everyone else he knew—except Joe, who’d loved it. Colt would have preferred that it be just another workday. New Year ’s was a holiday he could get behind, but Christmas? He hadn’t enjoyed it as a kid. Mostly be cause he always knew that it was never going to be anything spe cial. If his parents remembered to get him anything, it was always something he had no use for. A bike once, even though there was no place to ride it, and which promptly got stolen out of the hall way. A board game, even though he had no one to play it with. A

  G.I. Joe doll, even though he didn’t play with dolls. Francie had al ways liked to glitz up the apartment in those stupid lights, and she had a fake tree she put up in the corner, reminiscing all the while about the real trees they used to have when she was a kid in Indiana. And she loved to make a big deal out of hanging stock ings and stuffing them with things. That was another thing he should have appreciated about her and didn’t, how hard she tried at Christmas. But he wasn’t used to it. The whole thing seemed strange. They never had trees at all, fake or otherwise, when Colt was a kid.

  What Christmas meant for Colt now was that he kept a list of Francie’s measurements on file at his office, and when the holi days rolled around he hired a gift-buyer to go out and make his purchases for him, which this person did for a fee that was slightly more than nominal but still well worth it, considering how much time he saved. Four or five items of clothing, a few books, a piece of jewelry. These were dropped off in a box at the office, already wrapped, with cheery sentimental cards taped to the outside. All he had to do was sign them and lick the envelopes.

  And that was it for another year.

  “There’s something falling out of your pocket,” said Michael. Colt was jolted out of his reverie. “What?”

  “Here. Look. Is it important?”

  Michael pulled the envelope from the corrections department,

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  which had apparently been hanging half out of his pocket, and handed it to him. The notice of his father ’s parole hearing.

  Colt stared at it as if he’d never seen it before. He opened it again, holding the envelope in his teeth while he pulled out the paper. Once again he read the details. He’d forgotten all about it; in point of fact, he’d never actually intended to do anything about it. He certainly hadn’t meant to attend.

  But that was before the accident. And before Joe. And the list of charges against him that the judge had said would take months to read.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “That’s today.” “What’s today?” said Michael. “What time is it?” Colt asked him.

  Michael shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “I never wear a watch.” “Buy one,” said Colt. “You’re going to need one, if you’re going

  to be my assistant.”

&nb
sp; “Your assistant? But, dude—”

  “Stop calling me dude. I hate that fucking word,” said Colt. “Driver, go to the parking garage on the corner of Eleventh and West Thirtieth.”

  “What’s there?” asked Michael. “My car,” said Colt.

  “Your car? Are we going somewhere?” “Yeah,” said Colt. “We’re going to prison.”

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  The Hearing

  The prison was set back from the highway about a mile. It sat at the top of a hill that gave a sniper ’s view of the surrounding

  valley, at the end of a gravel road that passed over a sort of canal. One of New York State’s oldest penitentiaries, it loomed like a me dieval fortress that had been taken over by a race of malignant and warlike beings. Barbed wire sprouted from the ground and from the ramparts, resembling some deadly new species of flesh-shred ding ivy; the ground here was inexplicably gray, splotched with stubborn patches of snow that had resisted the thaw. It was an old prison, as far as prisons went, built a century earlier out of man-sized blocks of dun-colored stone—but, weathered by the de spair that seemed to emanate from the very ground, it had be come ageless in the way that only institutions can.

  Michael was driving—Colt was in the back, so that his broken arm could extend unimpeded—and he pulled the Camaro into the visitors’ parking lot. Colt noticed that even in the parking lot, re mote cameras were keeping an eye on them from the tops of the sodium-arc light poles. A sign on one of the poles said DO NOT

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  LEAVE VALUABLES IN CAR. PRISON NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BREAK-INS.

  Now that was the funniest thing he’d heard in months, he thought. Prison not responsible for break-ins? Of course not. It was only the breakouts they cared about.