Death Notes

you see me? I’m in the Porsche.’
    ‘You bought another car?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘What’s that make, eighteen?’
    He laughed and kept waving. The passers-by - tourists and drunks - were starting to stare.
    I said, ‘That’s great, Mitch.’
    ‘Yeah.’ He sounded satisfied. ‘Why don’t you come down? We’ll go for a ride.’
    ‘I’m working.’
    ‘We can ride around.’
    ‘Sounds great, Mitch, but I’d rather not.’
    ‘Come on, Ron. There’s something else I wanted to run by you.’
    Mitchell never saw me without ‘having to talk’ or ‘run something by.’ He seemed to forget we weren’t married anymore, and one of the reasons we weren’t was because we’d ‘talked’ ourselves out of being married.
    I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock. Mitch’s crisis was probably about which kind of foreign car he should buy next. ‘Some other time, Mitch.’
    ‘All right. I’ll come up. But if I get a ticket, man, it’s on your head.’
    He hung up before I could say no. I managed two quick gulps of beer before there was a tap at the door. I opened it a crack. ‘Can’t this wait, Mitch?’
    He grinned. ‘Come on, Ronnie. Let me in.’
    ‘Mitchell, I’m really tired. I didn’t run today and...’
    His startling green eyes caught mine. I knew the look. He was as determined as he was handsome, and he wasn’t going to go away. I sighed, let the door swing open and went back to my chair and my beer.
    Mitch followed, taking in the laptop computer on the coffee table and the half-empty bottle of beer next to it.
    ‘Beer?’ I said.
    ‘No, uh-uh. You go ahead.’
    He was giving me permission again. At least in my mind, he was. I started to bristle, but caught myself. People only gave permission if you asked them, and I wasn’t asking. I picked up the half-empty bottle and sat.
    ‘Don’t you want to know what’s going on?’ he said.
    I drank some beer, then said, ‘What’s going on?’
    ‘It’s about work.’
    I groaned. ‘Not this again. Mitch, how many times do I have to tell you? I’ve got a job. I don’t need another one, okay? Just because you don’t think this kind of work is steady enough, doesn’t mean it isn’t. Quit talking your ex-fraternity brothers into offering me jobs. I’m tired of it. And I bet they’re tired of it, too.’
    He plopped onto the sofa and waved away my words. ‘It’s not that, Ronnie. It’s my job.’
    For the first time, I noticed he wasn’t wearing his usual custom Italian-cut business suit. No power tie, either. Just an Izod shirt, Levi’s and Topsiders. ‘Didn’t you work today?’
    He grabbed a pillow off the couch and hugged it to his chest, then slouched down in his seat and let his head loll against the back of the couch. ‘Nu-huh,’ he said. ‘I called in. I’m thinking of giving notice.’
    ‘Why? Mitchell, you love your job. What happened?’
    ‘Nothing.’ He tossed the pillow back on the couch and sat up. ‘I want to do something different, Ron.’
    ‘Yeah?’ I couldn’t blame him. I’d rather spend a lifetime in San Quentin than a week as an accountant. But Mitch loved numbers. He thought ledgers were exciting.
    ‘I want to buy a boat and sail to Tahiti.’
    ‘Mitch, you don’t have to quit your job to take a vacation.’
    ‘I want to live there. Surf in the sun, eat coconuts all day, Ronnie. Just for a year. Time out. Reassess.’ He said it like he meant it but I still couldn’t believe him. Mitch wasn’t fickle. He hated to let go. He took a whole year once just to decide whether to sell his Citroën or his Saab, then ended up keeping both.
    ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea, Mitch. You’ll curl up into a little ball and die without structure in your life. You going to sell your cars? Your house?’
    ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’
    For one horrified moment, I thought he was going to invite me along, but what he said instead was just as bad.
    ‘I was thinking you could stay at my house, look after—’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’ He ran his eyes around the room. He didn’t say a word but he didn’t need to. I had one room. He had a big redwood house in Marin with a deck, a view, a private sauna, and enough furniture to fill a hotel.
    ‘I like it here, Mitch.’
    ‘Ron, I’m offering you a whole house to yourself. You wouldn’t have to worry about working, about landing a case to pay the rent.’
    ‘I don’t worry about those things, Mitch. You worry about them for me.