At least the weather was cooperating. The forecast called for a sunny, mild weekend. The sky was currently a deep blue, with only the thinnest rim of gray on the western horizon.
I’d reserved tee times at two courses about thirty miles to the northwest, in the Kittatinny Mountains, an area I hadn’t been to for years. Back when I was a Boy Scout I’d camped there a couple of times but had found the woods frightening. I was a city kid, not used to nature or silence. By high school these same woods had become a place of escape, somewhere to hike around with friends and drink beer. You could forget you were in New Jersey, walking for hours without coming across a single irritated, short-tempered soul.
Tomorrow we’d warm up with the easier course, one with wide fairways and few hazards. Then on Sunday we’d play the top-rated public course in the state, a heavily wooded eighteen holes in a secluded valley, where supposedly it was common to spot eagles overhead.
“You can’t imagine how much I’ve been looking forward to this,” Nolan said, when I described the courses to him. “Campaigning can wear you down.”
“I remember,” I said.
“Nah, that was only a statewide election,” he said. “This is a whole different ball game.”
I’d wondered whether Nolan would have time for us this year. But when I’d e-mailed him a few weeks earlier, asking if he was sure his campaign could do without him for a weekend, he fired back a philosophical reply: If I can’t take a weekend off to see my closest friends, then what the hell is it all for?
The train arrived and spat out dozens of businessmen and women, well dressed but rumpled in the aftershock of their work-week. Jeffrey teetered off the train, suitcase in one hand, golf bag in the other. Seeing us standing by my car, he set the suitcase on the ground and waved. We went over to greet him.
“I didn’t see Evan on the train,” Jeffrey said by way of greeting. He’d boarded at Newark Airport. Evan was supposed to have boarded the same train earlier in New York.
Just then my cell phone rang, cutting the mystery short.
“Don’t even try to imagine all the fucking work that got dumped on me today,” Evan said into my ear.
He was a year away from making partner at his law firm. The way he explained it, to make partner at a major New York firm you couldn’t simply work eighty-hour weeks. You had to work eighty-hour weeks and ask for more.
When I got off the phone, Nolan and Jeffrey were both looking incredulous. I confirmed their suspicions. “He’s tied up.”
“Tied up?” Jeffrey said. “What the hell does that mean?”
I shrugged. “Lawyer stuff.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Nolan said. “Jeffrey made it. I made it….”
“He said he’ll be here tomorrow morning,” I told them. “He promised to be on the first train.” I picked up Jeffrey’s golf bag and headed to the car. “Come on—you guys must be starving.”
They were. We decided on an early dinner. Afterward, we’d go to the golf range and hit practice balls. Then we’d head back to the house for a drink on the porch.
“I bought a bottle of Scotch and some cigars,” I said as I lowered Jeffrey’s luggage into the trunk.
“None for me,” Jeffrey said. I figured, given how drunk he’d obviously been last weekend, that he meant the Scotch, until he added, “I’ve quit smoking.”
“So have I,” I said. “Cigarettes, anyway.” It’d been a month since my last cigarette. Not easy considering where I worked—where there was no ventilation and the carpet reeked so badly it seemed to have been woven from smoke. “But I’ve got a baby coming. What’s your excuse?”
“Same as yours,” he said. We looked at him, confused. “Sara’s pregnant.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Nolan said.
Jeffrey and Sara had been married for eight years with no children.
“Congrats, man,” I said. “That’s terrific news.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said listlessly, and I couldn’t help wondering just what the hell he wasn’t telling.
Antonello’s was a favorite restaurant of Cynthia’s and mine for special occasions. I returned from the restroom to find antipasto on the table and Nolan engaged in a full-on sales pitch.
“I told Will it sounded like a great idea,” he was saying to Jeffrey, “and that he should count me in for twenty. So what about you?”
I sat down, torn between interrupting the conversation and hearing what Jeffrey had to say. He shrugged. “I’ll have to think it over.”
“Forget it,” I said. “We can talk about this some other time.” Then, to Nolan: “I’d rather hear about your campaign.”
“Think what over?” Nolan said. “Come on, we’re talking about a twenty-grand investment. It’s a no-brainer.”