by Lou Berney
If he told Seraphine he’d decided to trade his life for Charlotte and the girls, she’d be absolutely baffled. She’d gape at him like he was a complete stranger.
“You’ll make it quick and easy for me,” Guidry said again. “Yes? I want to stress that part.”
“You’re a fool.”
“Promise me,” Guidry said. “One last good deed for an old pal.”
“You’re a fool,” she said.
“How much time do you need to set it up? A couple of hours?”
He thought she might refuse to answer. But then she snapped her compact shut and put it back into her purse and said, “Yes.”
Guidry stood. “All right. I feel like a walk in the park. You know the levee behind the zoo? Nice view of the river, secluded, a good spot for peaceful rumination. I must have told you about it a dozen times. You guessed that’s where I would go.”
Her composure, if ever it had really fled, returned. She paid the check. “Good-bye, mon cher,” she said, and walked out without looking back.
He followed the streetcar line Uptown and left his car parked across from Loyola. The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue out front beseeched him, arms raised high, begging Guidry to … what? Stay the course? Turn tail and flee?
The park was always eerie as a winter twilight approached. Not many people around, the oaks shrouded with Spanish moss, the shadows lunging across the path for one another, twining and embracing. Guidry regretted that he’d never actually seen any of Charlotte’s photos. It was funny, wasn’t it? She’d have a picture of his shadow, strung across that redbrick sidewalk in Flagstaff, but not one of him.
The zoo was already closed for the day. Guidry crossed River Drive and climbed to the top of the levee. Not another soul in sight. He found a comfortable patch of grass and spread out the ugly houndstooth sport coat he’d purchased in New Mexico.
Another regret: He hadn’t stopped by his apartment to change into his own clothes. But which suit? As with the gumbo, it would have been an impossible choice. He just hoped that the Times-Picayune didn’t run a photo of him in this getup. His reputation would never recover.
He took a seat on the sport coat. The drive from the Quarter had taken him twenty minutes, the walk through the park another half an hour. If Seraphine’s man had any sense, he’d drive up Walnut to the cul-de-sac and spare himself the hike.
Guidry wasn’t afraid of dying. Well, he was terrified of dying. But more terrified of dying badly. So many of the people who crossed Carlos died just so. In this matter, though, Guidry trusted Seraphine. Quick and easy was in her best interest almost as much as it was in his.
It really was a nice view of the river. The water rippling, the merry lights of the barges and the towboats.
Your life was supposed to flash before your eyes right before you died, was it not? Time slowing and stretching and one last stroll through the daisies. Guidry wouldn’t mind. Oh, the redheads, the brunettes, the blondes. Or maybe you had to pack light for the afterlife, and the last memory in your head, when the works shut down, was the only one you were allowed to keep for the rest of eternity. If you were lucky, if you knew what was coming, you got to choose your memory. Guidry liked that idea better.
After a few minutes, he heard the footsteps behind him.
He closed his eyes and waited.
2003
Epilogue
The thing is, she loves her life. Even days like today, when her son refuses to acknowledge her existence at breakfast (Rosemary won’t let him spend spring break in Hana with his dad and Sporty Spice; Rosemary refuses to call her ex-husband’s girlfriend by her real name; Rosemary won’t stop being such a hater, Mom, Jesus). Even days like today, when her daughter declares on the way to school that college is a scam, a Ponzi scheme, a something-something of late-stage capitalism (Sweetheart, you’re going to college if I have to drag you there with my bare hands). Even days like today, when every writer she met pitched mismatched partners teaming up to solve a murder or pull off a heist or open a day-care center.
Rosemary loves her life! She has two healthy, smart, kind, occasionally wonderful, always challenging, never dull children. She’s a vice president of production at a major studio (how many women in Hollywood can say that?). She has real friends, the sort who would help you chop up a body and bury it in lime, no questions asked. She’s forty-six but looks mid-late thirties, thanks to genetically blessed skin and a lifelong aversion to beaches and cigarettes. Mid-late thirties is still ancient by industry standards, but whatever. She ran a half marathon last year. Her ex is a good father and not a bad guy.
She’s a cliché. In so many ways, yes. But who isn’t? At least Rosemary picked a cliché that she’s happy to inhabit.
“You don’t have to marry him,” Joan is saying. “It’s a first date. Have drinks. See what you think. He’s your type.”
Joan must be driving through the canyon. Her voice cuts out, warbles. Rosemary gets the gist. Joan fell in love in medical school and has been with her girlfriend ever since, almost half her life. She fears that Rosemary will never find her soul mate, that she’ll grow old and die alone.
“Guess who’s starting his own production company and wants me to run it,” Rosemary says.
“I have no idea,” Joan says.
“He’s a huge, huge star.”
“I have no idea.”
Rosemary loves how stubbornly oblivious Joan has remained to any-and everything Hollywood. Joan grew up in L.A., she lives in L.A., her sister works for a studio, her mother spent twenty-five years working in the publicity departments of various studios. And yet there is an excellent chance that if Nicole Kidman walked into Joan’s exam room, Joan would say, “Oh, I like your accent, are you from Australia?”
“I love what I do now,” Rosemary says. “But a change would be fun. But a change would be risky. In Hollywood you only get a second act if you’re under forty. I’m too old to fall down the stairs.”
“So stay where you are,” Joan says.
“Or you could say, ‘No, Rosemary, of course you’re not too old. Of course you won’t fall down the stairs.’”
“I’m almost there. Are you almost here?”
“Joan.”
“What.”
“Do you think we’d be friends if we weren’t sisters?”
“No.”
Another thing that Rosemary loves about Joan. She is not one to mince words. Neither, Rosemary supposes, is she.
At the cemetery they walk up the path arm in arm, the way they used to do as little girls coming home from school. Rosemary has brought daisies and larkspur, Joan gladiolus. Rosemary also has a ticket stub from her last movie, a rom-com that performed better than expected. She tucks it in among the larkspur. Their mother saw every single one of Rosemary’s movies. At the end, in the hospital, she read every script. And she gave Rosemary notes, you bet she did.
Joan leaves behind a small photo of a beaming African-American girl, seven or eight years old. Every time their mother saw Joan, she would ask, “Whose life did you save today, chickadee?” If Joan had saved a life, or two, their mother would want to hear all the details.
“Do you know what Mom told me once?” Rosemary says. She glances at Joan. Joan is crying, quietly and without expression. One of her many talents. “She probably told you, too.”
“What.”
“That when she was young, she wanted to be a photographer. A real photographer, I mean. Like, I don’t know, Annie Leibovitz.”
“I know that,” Joan says.
“I just said that you probably did.”
“We have all those boxes of photos in storage. We need to go through them at some point.”
“Every single industry thing I go to,” Rosemary says, “someone comes up and says, ‘Oh, I worked with your mother at Warners.’ ‘Oh, I worked with your mother at Paramount.’ ‘She was always the smartest one in the room.’ ‘She was always the toughest one in the room.’”
A tear rolls down J
oan’s cheek and catches in the corner of her mouth. Rosemary takes a pocket pack of tissues from her purse. She keeps a couple of tissues for herself before she hands the pack to Joan. Rosemary never cries at work or at home. Only when she’s here, with Joan.
“Can you believe she’s been gone four years already?” Rosemary says.
Joan considers.
“It’s a rhetorical question, Joan.”
Joan blows her nose. “I had a dream about Lucky the other night.”
Their old dog, their faithful companion all the way through elementary school and junior high.
“Do you remember … I can’t remember if I remember,” Joan says. “There was a motel, and maybe Mom had to sneak Lucky in because no dogs were allowed?”
Rosemary’s memory from that time in her life is hazy. The trip from Oklahoma to California is mostly a blur. It’s the same for Joan, they’ve compared notes. Rosemary remembers the Grand Canyon and the hotel in Las Vegas. Joan remembers a boat ride across a lake and a man who did card tricks for them. She remembers, or claims she remembers, meeting the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Sure, Joan, sure.
Neither of them remembers the car wreck that stranded them in New Mexico. Rosemary remembers the Good Samaritan who gave them a ride to Las Vegas. What was his name? And what the fuck, by the way, was their mom thinking, hitching a ride to California with some strange guy? It was a more trusting time, Rosemary supposes. Hollywood hadn’t yet produced dozens of thrillers about mismatched serial killers who partner up to murder helpless hitchhikers.
Rosemary wants to say the Good Samaritan’s name was Pat Boone, but she knows of course that can’t be right. He had a nice smile, she’s pretty sure.
“Do you know what I really remember?” Rosemary says. “That one day.”
Joan blows her nose and smiles. “Yes.”
It’s Rosemary’s first real memory from California, the most intact and fully developed. They’d been staying with Aunt Marguerite for only a month or two, her little bungalow on Idaho, five blocks from the ocean. Their dad and their uncle, their dad’s older brother, came out from Oklahoma to visit. Their dad took Rosemary and Joan to the pier, and they rode the carousel.
When they returned to the house, their mom and their uncle were still sitting in the front room. Their mom on the sofa, their uncle in the chair with the scarlet-and-cream striped satin. Rosemary and Joan, in the hall, watched through the arched doorway. Their mother and their uncle didn’t hear the girls come in. Their dad was still outside. Parking the car maybe?
“Charlie, I’m going to warn you one more time.” Their uncle’s face had turned the color of the chair, scarlet and cream both. “I’ll get Dooley the best lawyer money can buy. The two best lawyers. If you and the girls don’t come home with us right this minute, I promise you’ll be in for the fight of your life.”
Their mom. Oh, their mom. Cool and collected, smiling pleasantly. She might have been chatting with a girlfriend about which particular shade of eye shadow looked best on her.
“Well, then,” their mom said, “I suppose I’d better be ready.”
A mist has begun to fall. The June gloom in Santa Monica. Rosemary blows her nose, too.
“She was a force of nature,” Rosemary says.
“It doesn’t feel like she’s been gone four years,” Joan says. “But it also feels like forever.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to forget her.”
“Don’t be stupid, Joan,” Rosemary says.
“Okay,” Joan says.
Acknowledgments
It’s my great good fortune to have an agent, Shane Salerno, who cares ferociously about his clients and labors passionately on their behalf. He’s always been there for me, day or night, with the right answer or the right question. I’m indebted to Don Winslow, Steve Hamilton, and Meg Gardiner for steering me Shane’s way.
My editor, Emily Krump, is not only scary smart and talented but also an absolute pleasure to work with. I’m grateful to my publisher, the amazing Liate Stehlik, and to Lynn Grady, Carla Parker, Danielle Bartlett, Maureen Sugden, Kaitlin Harri, and Julia Elliott. There are so many terrific people at William Morrow and HarperCollins. Many of them I’m not acquainted with personally, but I know how much they do for me and their support is deeply appreciated.
I’d like to thank my friends and family. I don’t deserve them. A few require special mention this time around: Ellen Berney, Sarah Klingenberg, Lauren Klingenberg, Thomas Cooney, Bud Elder, Ellen Knight, Chris Hoekstra, Trish Daly, Bob Bledsoe, Misa Shuford, Alexis Persico, and Elizabeth Fleming (and all the Diefenderfers, who provide a welcoming place for me to write every day).
The best part about being a crime writer is that you become part of the crime-writing community. I want to thank all the writers, readers, reviewers, bloggers, marketers, and booksellers who have been such an invaluable source of encouragement and advice.
This book belongs to my wife, Christine—as do they all, as will they all.
About the Author
LOU BERNEY is the author of three previous novels, Gutshot Straight, Whiplash River, and the multiple prize–winning The Long and Faraway Gone. His short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He lives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Also by Lou Berney
The Long and Faraway Gone
Whiplash River
Gutshot Straight
The Road to Bobby Joe and Other Stories
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
november road. Copyright © 2018 by Lou Berney. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Owen Corrigan
Cover photographs © Rae Russel/Getty Images (girl); © Here/Shutterstock (newspaper background); © AndreyKuzmin/Shutterstock (burnt paper)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Berney, Lou, author.
Title: November road : a novel / Lou Berney.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : William Morrow, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2018018501| ISBN 9780062663849 (hc) | ISBN 9780062663870 (el)
Subjects: | GSAFD: Mystery fiction. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3552.E73125 N68 2018 | DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018018501
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06266387-0
Print ISBN: 978-0-06266384-9
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