The Bourbon Kings

“Stop thinking, Jeff.”

“I’m serious.”

“So bet.”

The cell phone went quiet. But his buddy didn’t. “U.Va. was a lifetime ago. Lot can change.”

“Apparently not if I’m still on your couch—”

“What happened to you, man.”

“I died waiting for you to bet or fold.”

Jeff muttered as he made a stack of reds and blues and tossed them into the center. “’Nother twenty thousand.”

“That’s more like it.” The cell phone started to ring again. “I’ll see you. And I’ll raise you fifty. If you shut up.”

“You sure you want to do that?”

“Get you to be quiet? Yup.”

“Go aggressive in poker with an investment banker like me. Clichés are there for a reason—I’m greedy and great with math. Unlike your kind.”

“My kind.”

“People like you Bradfords don’t know how to make money—you’ve been trained to spend it. Now, unlike most dilettantes, your family actually has an income stream—although that’s what keeps you from having to learn anything. So not sure it’s a value-add in the long term.”

Lane thought back to why he’d finally left Charlemont for good. “I’ve learned plenty, trust me.”

“And now you sound bitter.”

“You’re boring me. Am I supposed to enjoy that?”

“Why don’t you ever go home for Christmas? Thanksgiving? Easter?”

Lane collapsed his cards and put them face-down on the felt. “I don’t believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny anymore, goddamn it, and turkey is overrated. What is your problem?”

Wrong question to ask. Especially after a night of poker and drinking. Especially to a guy like Stern, who was categorically incapable of being anything but perfectly honest.

“I hate that you’re so alone.”

“You’ve got to be kidding—”

“I’m one of your oldest friends, right? If I don’t tell you like it is, who’s going to? And don’t get pissy with me—you picked a New York Jew, not one of the thousand other southern-fried stick-up-the-asses that went to that ridiculous college of ours to be your perpetual roommate. So fuck you.”

“Are we going to play this hand out?”

Jeff’s shrewd stare narrowed. “Answer me one thing.”

“Yes, I am seriously reconsidering why I didn’t crash with Wedge or Chenoweth right now.”

“Ha. You couldn’t stand either of those two longer than a day. Unless you were drunk, which actually, you have been for the last three and a half months straight. And that’s another thing I have a problem with.”

“Bet. Now. For the love of God.”

“Why—”

As that cell phone went off a third time, Lane got to his feet and stalked across the room. Over on the bar, next to his billfold, the glowing screen was lit up—not that he bothered to look at who it was.

He answered the call only because it was either that or commit homicide.

The male Southern voice on the other end of the connection said three words: “Your momma’s dyin’.”

As the meaning sank into his brain, everything destabilized around him, the walls closing in, the floor rolling, the ceiling collapsing on his head. Memories didn’t so much come to him as assault him, the alcohol in his system doing nothing to dull the onslaught.

No, he thought. Not now. Not this morning.

Although would there ever be a good time?

“Not ever” was the only acceptable timetable on this.

From a distance, he heard himself speak. “I’ll be there before noon.”

And then he hung up.

“Lane?” Jeff got to his feet. “Oh, shit, don’t you pass out on me. I’ve got to be at Eleven Wall in an hour and I need a shower.”

From a vast distance, Lane watched his hand reach out and pick up his wallet. He put that and the phone in the pocket of his slacks and headed for the door.

“Lane! Where the fuck are you going?”

“Don’t wait up,” he said as he opened the way out.

“When’re you going to be back? Hey, Lane—what the hell?”

His old, dear friend was still talking at him as Lane walked off, letting the door close in his wake. At the far end of the hall, he punched through a steel door and started jogging down the concrete stairwell. As his footfalls echoed all around, and he made tight turn after tight turn, he dialed a familiar phone number.

When the call was answered, he said, “This is Lane Baldwine. I need a jet at Teterboro now—going to Charlemont.”

There was a brief delay, and then his father’s executive assistant got back on the connection. “Mr. Baldwine, there is a jet available. I have spoken directly with the pilot. Flight plans are being filed as we speak. Once you get to the airport, proceed to—”

“I know where our terminal is.” He broke out into the marble lobby, nodded to the doorman, and proceeded to the revolving doors. “Thanks.”

Just a quickie, he told himself as he hung up and hailed a cab. With any luck, he would be back in Manhattan and annoying Jeff by nightfall, twelve midnight at the very latest.

Ten hours. Fifteen, tops.

He had to see his momma, though. That was what Southern boys did.

TWO

Three hours, twenty-two minutes, and some number of seconds later, Lane looked out the oval window of one of the Bradford Bourbon Company’s brand-new Embraer Lineage 1000E corporate jets. Down below, the city of Charlemont was laid out like a Lego diorama, its sections of rich and poor, of commerce and agriculture, of homesteading and highway displayed in what appeared to be only two dimensions. For a moment, he tried to picture the land as it had been when his family had first settled in the area in 1778.