Freedom полностью

“Wow, wow, wow,” Walter said. “This is not what I expected to be hearing. I thought you’d be finishing a record and getting ready for more touring. I would have called you sooner if I’d known you were building decks. I was trying not to bother you.”

“You never have to feel that.”

“Well, I never heard from you, I figured you were busy.”

“Mea culpa,” Katz said. “How are you guys doing? Everything OK with you?”

“More or less. You know we moved to Washington, right?”

Katz closed his eyes and flogged his neurons to produce a confirming memory of this. “Yes,” he said. “I think I knew that.”

“Well, things have gotten somewhat complex here, it turns out. In fact, that’s what prompted me to call. I have a proposal for you. Do you have some time tomorrow afternoon? On the late side?”

“Late afternoon’s no good. How about morning?”

Walter explained that he was meeting Robert Kennedy Jr. at noon and had to return to Washington in the evening for a flight to Texas on Saturday morning. “We could talk on the phone now,” he said, “but my assistant really wants to meet you. She’s the one you’d be working with. I’d rather not steal her thunder by saying anything now.”

“Your assistant,” Katz said.

“Lalitha. She’s incredibly young and brilliant. She actually lives right upstairs from us. I think you’ll like her a lot.”

The brightness and excitement in Walter’s voice, the hint of guilt or thrill in the word “actually,” did not escape Katz’s notice.

“Lalitha,” he said. “What kind of name is that?”

“Indian. Bengali. She grew up in Missouri. She’s actually very pretty.”

“I see. And what’s her proposal about?”

“Saving the planet.”

“I see.”

Katz suspected that Walter was calculatedly dangling this Lalitha as bait, and it irritated him to be thought so easily manipulated. And yet—knowing Walter to be a man who didn’t call a female pretty without good reason—he was manipulated, he was intrigued.

“Let me see if I can rearrange some things tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“Fantastic,” Walter said.

What would be would be and what would not would not. In Katz’s experience, it seldom hurt to make chicks wait. He called White Street and informed Zachary that the meeting with Caitlyn would have to be postponed.

The following afternoon, at 3:15, only fifteen minutes late, he strode into Walker’s and saw Walter and the Indian chick waiting at a corner table. Before he even reached the table, he knew he had no chance with her. There were eighteen words of body language with which women signified availability and submission, and Lalitha was using a good twelve of them at once on Walter. She looked like a living illustration of the phrase hanging on his words. As Walter rose from the table to embrace Katz, the girl’s eyes remained fixed on Walter; and this was indeed a weird twist for the universe to have taken. Never before had Katz seen Walter in studly mode, turning a pretty head. He was wearing a good dark suit and had gained some middle-aged bulk. There was a new breadth to his shoulders, a new projection to his chest. “Richard, Lalitha,” he said.

“Very nice to meet you,” Lalitha said, loosely shaking his hand and adding nothing about being honored or excited, nothing about being a huge fan.

Katz sank into a chair feeling sucker-punched by a damning recognition: contrary to the lies he’d always told himself, he wanted Walter’s women not in spite of his friendship but because of it. For two years, he’d been consistently oppressed by avowals of fandom, and now suddenly he was disappointed not to receive one of these avowals from Lalitha, because of the way she was looking at Walter. She was dark-skinned and complexly round and slender. Round-eyed, round-faced, round-breasted; slender in the neck and arms. A solid B-plus that could be an A-minus if she would work for extra credit. Katz pushed a hand through his hair, brushing out bits of Trex dust. His old friend and foe was beaming with unalloyed delight at seeing him again.

“So what’s up,” he said.

“Well, a lot,” Walter said. “Where to begin?”

“That’s a nice suit, by the way. You look good.”

“Oh, you like it?” Walter looked down at himself. “Lalitha made me buy it.”

“I kept telling him his wardrobe sucked,” the girl said. “He hadn’t bought a new suit in ten years!”

She had a subtle subcontinental accent, percussive, no-nonsense, and she sounded proprietary of Walter. If her body hadn’t been speaking of such anxiousness to please, Katz might have believed she already owned him.

“You look good yourself,” Walter said.

“Thank you for lying.”

“No, it’s good, it’s kind of a Keith Richards look.”

“Ah, now we’re being honest. Keith Richards looks like a wolf dressed up in a grandmother’s bonnet. That headband?”

Walter consulted Lalitha. “Do you think Richard looks like a grandmother?”

“No,” she said with a curt, round O sound.

“So you’re in Washington,” Katz said.