Empire Falls

saw it was Jimmy Minty at the wheel. He could feel the cruiser’s front bumper actually nudge the side of the building, causing the Formica booth, as well as its ashtrays, to shudder. Instead of getting out, Jimmy—in uniform today—just sat there, his lips moving as if in conversation with an invisible companion. Only when he leaned forward to hang up the receiver did it dawn on Miles that he’d been talking into his radio. This made three times in two days that their paths had crossed. Coincidentally. Well, it was possible.
    “I could help you rig the platforms at least,” his father was saying. “That way you’d know you were standing on something solid.”
    “I know how to rig scaffolding, Dad.”
    “I should hope so,” Max said. “I’m the one taught you how, in case you forgot.”
    “I didn’t forget.”
    “I let you help, if you recall. If your mother’d known she’d have had a fit, but I let you help anyway. Now I need some traveling expenses and you tell me to take a hike.”
    “I never said—”
    “I gotta pee,” his father said disgustedly, sliding out of the booth, as if the conversation, not the coffee, had caused this unfortunate need to relieve himself.
    The restroom door had no sooner closed behind Max than Jimmy Minty slipped into the booth, setting his shiny black hat on the table. His red hair was going a little gray at the temples, Miles noticed.
    The waitress set a cup of coffee in front of him. “I wish you wouldn’t run into that wall every time you pull in, Jimmy,” she said. “You scare the hell out of people. One minute they’re drinking coffee and minding their own business, and the next minute you’re parkin’ in the booth with them. It’s not like the side of this damn building’s invisible. The idea is to stop before you get to it.”
    “You need to get a couple of those concrete curbs out there.” Minty smiled. “I bet I’m not the only one who taps that wall, Shirley.”
    “No,” she admitted. “You’re just the only one who hits it every time.”
    When she stepped away, the policeman shrugged. “Hey, Miles. I thought that was your Jetta out there. You should’ve spent the extra for the undercoating. What would it have run you—couple hundred?”
    It never took Jimmy Minty long to turn any conversation to one about money. He particularly liked to draw Miles’s attention to whatever was wrong with any of his possessions, such as rust on the Jetta, of which there was plenty. Miles had long suspected that Jimmy Minty considered him some kind of yardstick by which he might measure his own economic well-being. The oddest thing about this, Miles thought, was that it seemed a direct extension of their childhoods on Long Street. Jimmy Minty had always taken careful inventory of Miles’s belongings, wanting to know how much everything cost and where it was purchased. If they got similar Christmas presents, Jimmy liked to explain why his was better, that it had been purchased smarter and cheaper because his dad knew where to go—even if the toy in question was obviously a cheap knockoff. After detailing the advantages of his present, he’d suggest they switch, just for a while; often, before Jimmy returned it, Miles’s toy would get broken.
    Even thirty years later Miles could still remember the relief he felt when his mother took him out of the public grade school and enrolled him at Sacred Heart, where Jimmy—the family was not Catholic—could not follow. Gradually, though they remained neighbors, the boys’ lives began to drift apart, and by the time they were thrown together again in high school, they had different lives, different friends. Of course, Jimmy’s, as he explained to Miles, were better. After graduation he did a stint in the service while Miles was away at college, and by the time Miles returned to Empire Falls, Jimmy was newly married and living in Fairhaven. He visited his parents, though, and after Miles and Janine got married he made overtures about striking up their old friendship, something Miles didn’t particularly desire, since the grown-up Jimmy Minty had the same way of taking inventory behind his eyes, only now he was comparing wives. For the last decade, they had seldom seen each other, except in moving vehicles or when Jimmy had a new toy he wanted to show off in the Empire Grill. The last time—a year ago—he’d ordered a steak and then lingered at the counter drinking coffee until Miles deigned to notice the