Beach Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

isn’t.
    I have a phone in my hand, but I can’t remember why. Oh, yeah,
Holly.
She’s a woman I’ve been going out with for the past few weeks. No big thing.
    Unfortunately, I don’t want to call her. I just want to want to call her, in the same way that I want to pretend she’s my girlfriend, even though we both know we’re only killing time.
    Wingo’s a dog, not a pal. My girlfriend isn’t really my girlfriend. But the whiskey is the real thing, so I pour out half a glass and gulp it down. Thank God that son of a bitch Dr. Jameson still makes house calls.
    I’d feel better if I could cry, but I haven’t cried since I was ten, when my father died. So I take another long gulp and then another, and then instead of thinking about every horrible thing that’s happened today, I find myself thinking about Kate Costello. It’s been ten years since we broke up, and I still think about Kate all the time, especially when something important happens, good or bad. Plus, I saw her tonight out on Beach Road. As always, she looked beautiful, and even under the circumstances, seeing her was a jolt.
    Once I start regretting how I screwed things up with Kate, it’s only a matter of a couple more sips before I revisit
The Moment.
Boston Garden, February 11, 1995. Barely more than a minute to play and the T-wolves are down by twenty-three. A part of the game so meaningless it’s called “garbage time.” I come down on a teammate’s ankle, blow out my left knee, and my pro career is over before I hit the famed parquet floor.
    That’s how it works with me and Dr. Jameson. First I think about losing Kate Costello. Then I think about losing basketball.
    See, first I had nothing. That was okay because in the beginning everyone has nothing. Then I found basketball, and through basketball I found Kate. Now, Kate would deny that. Women always do. But you and I, Doc, we’re not children. We both know I never would have gotten within ten feet of Kate Costello without basketball. I mean, look at her!
    Then I lost Kate. And then I lost basketball. Bada-bing. Bada-boom.
    So here’s the question I’ve been asking myself for ten years: how the hell am I going to get her back without it?
    Doc, you still there?

Chapter 16
    Kate
    UNTIL THIS GOD-AWFUL, godforsaken morning in early September, the only funeral for a young person I’d ever attended was, I think, Wendell Taylor’s. Wendell was a big, lovable bear who played bass for Save the Whales, a local band that made it pretty good and had begun to tour around New England.
    Two Thanksgivings ago, Wendell was driving back from a benefit show in Providence. When he fell asleep at the wheel, he was six miles from his bed, and the telephone pole he hit was the only unmovable object for two hundred yards in either direction. It took the EMS ninety minutes to cut him out of his van.
    That Wendell was such a decent guy and was so thrilled to actually be making a living from his music made the whole thing incredibly sad. Yet somehow his funeral, full of funny and teary testimonials from friends from as far back as kindergarten, made people feel better.
    The funeral for Rochie, Feifer, and Walco, which takes place in a squat stone church just east of town, doesn’t do anyone a lick of good.
    Instead of cathartic tears, there’s clenched rage, a lot of it directed at the conspicuously absent owner of the house where the murders took place. To the thousand or so stuffed into that church Sunday morning, Walco and Feif and Rochie died for some movie star’s vanity.
    I know it’s not quite that simple. From what I hear, Feif, Walco, and Rochie hung out at the court all summer and enjoyed the scene as much as anyone. Still, it would have been nice of Smitty Wilson to show up and pay his respects, don’t ya think?
    There is one cathartic moment this morning, but it’s an ugly one. Before the service begins, Walco’s younger brother spots a photographer across the street. Turns out that the
Daily