Free The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris Page B

up the drive, they saw the lights from Becka’s Volvo coming down. The two cars edged into the snowy margins. They rolled down their windows.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Nowhere.”
    “Where are you going, Rebecca?”
    Becka turned impatiently to look through the windshield and then back to her mother. Tim leaned into Jane to better see his daughter. “I have a show,” she said.
    “This is a school night.”
    “School night? Are you serious?”
    “Where’s the show?”
    Becka unclipped her seat belt and pivoted around to the backseat, where her guitar case lay. She straightened herself and held a flyer out the window. Jane took it and read. Then she passed it to Tim without looking at him.
    “It’s not an open mike?”
    “I just gave you the flyer, Mom.”
    Tim was reading the flyer. “This has your name on it,” he said through the window.
    “It’s just around here,” she said. “Not like in the city or something.”
    “Why didn’t you tell us about this sooner?”
    “Because I didn’t want you
coming,
” she said. “Besides, what were the chances of that anyway? Can I go now?”
    Jane made her promise to be home by one and Becka continued down the drive. Jane pulled into the garage, reached in back for the wine and stepped out. Tim was still reading the flyer when she entered the house.

16
    R. H. Hobbs was a stormer. He stepped out of the car before the driver had a chance to open the door and he stormed through the lower lobby and up the escalator to the mezzanine. He stood at the elevators making the people around him nervous. He was the first in and somehow the first out, after the women. He stormed through the glass doors into Troyer, Barr’s reception area and drummed his fingers on the front desk. The receptionist took his instructions, picked up the phone and silently urged it to ring faster. R.H. was this way even when he didn’t have a murder indictment hanging over his head. While waiting for one of the team’s associates to show up and lead him back, he tried sitting on the sofa, but then stood and walked over to the window. He vigorously shook the change in one of his pockets while peering out the glass. His gaze failed to alight on anything so he took his hands out of his pockets and ran them over his slick, brutally dyed hair, smoothing down his widow’s peak as he walked back to the receptionist to ask her how much longer he was going to have to wait. He had been there just forty-five seconds. The receptionist picked up the phone to make another call when Tim appeared.
    “Holy hell, look who it is,” said R.H. “An attorney I used to know. I wonder how I might retain his services.”
    “How are you, old friend?” said Tim.
    “Looking at jail time,” said R.H. “You might have heard.”
    R.H. extended his hand. Tim’s hands were badly frostbitten but he didn’t feel he could deny him. He fought the urge to cry out as R.H. squeezed and pumped.
    “Maybe I’m just being a prima donna because my life is on the line, but would it kill you to return my calls?”
    “I’ve not been as attentive as I’ve needed to be, R.H.,” he said, leading his client out of the staid lobby into the firm’s quiet interior. “But I haven’t neglected you, despite how it might appear, even as I’ve had to deal with Jane’s upcoming surgery.”
    “Uh-huh,” said R.H. “And what kind of cancer is it?”
    “I’m afraid it’s spread. It doesn’t look good.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that. Why are you carrying that backpack?”
    “This? Doesn’t it make me look like a schoolboy?”
    “And you’re wearing snow boots. Why are you wearing snow boots?”
    “There is a funny story about these boots, R.H. You’ll get a kick out of it.”
    Suddenly R.H. stopped. He turned to face the wall. One of his knees buckled. Tim thought the older man was having a heart attack. But then R.H. covered his eyes with his hand and tucked the other hand under his arm and began to cry. He looked a