The Next Right Thing Read Online Free PDF Page A

Alexander, in exchange. She wasn’t the best mother, and Terry loved the kid, but it was extortion, pure and simple. Was that the beginning of Terry’s end? At the time, I was too busy falling in love with MP to notice.
    “I’m leaving, Claire.” I pushed out my chair. “I’ve heard this song before.”
    “I’m trying to help you,” she said. “This is the background. Terry called me that last night, but I wouldn’t see him. He called me more than once.”
    “Was he with anyone?”
    “The first time he called he was with that kid from the Thursday-night beginners’ meeting—”
    “Troy Padilla? Did Troy get him the drugs?”
    “That kid? He’s just a kitten. No, it was the other guy. You remember that lawyer John Sewell who Terry used to work with? This guy—I think he was an electrician or a handyman—he used to work for John Sewell.”
    “John Sewell?” I recognized the name because I read the newspapers. He was as big as a lawyer got in Orange County. I’d taken him and Terry fishing once. He was also dating my ex-wife—that part made the most sense: Claire’s modus operandi was to find the link between her worst instincts and your worst instincts. “John Sewell wasn’t with Terry that day. A guy like John Sewell doesn’t even get off the freeway in Santa Ana unless he’s getting paid a thousand dollars an hour for the privilege.”
    “You’re not listening,” Claire said. “This guy, this electrician, he used to work for Sewell on some buildings that Sewell owns. That’s I guess how Terry met him? He had like a dog’s name or something.”
    “This is what you have?” I said. “An electrician with a name like a dog?”
    Claire straightened up. “Look, I don’t know the guy. When Terry called the second time, he said he was with some guy who used to work for Sewell, and all I can remember is that he was named after a dog.”
    “Was he named after a dog,” Wade asked, “like Lassie or Rover? Or was he named after a dog as in he happens to have the same name as a dog you know?”
    Claire and I took a moment to marvel at Wade.
    “Terry called me that night,” she continued. “It sounded like a booty call, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. But he told me he was doing a twelfth step on this guy. The guy with the name of a dog. The guy with the name of a dog was having some trouble with heroin.” A twelfth step was when a sober alcoholic visited a recently drunk alcoholic at his home. A.A.s did this less often now than in the thirties, when the fellowship had begun, but Terry had done more than his share.
    “How stoned were you?” I said.
    “I wasn’t stoned,” Claire said.
    I didn’t say anything. I held her eyes.
    “I was drunk,” Claire said.
    Wade laughed.
    “I didn’t call him,” Claire said. “He called me.”
    I stood up. From behind the counter at the other end of the café, my friend Jean Claude caught my eye. He gave me what I’ve come to recognize as a Gallic shrug. I said, “You were drunk, Claire. You can’t even remember this guy’s name. You just want to cause some trouble. You don’t know shit.”
    “I’m on your side,” Claire said. “I want to know what turned that sweet man into an unholy prick. Before that night, I hadn’t talked to Terry in over a year. Since he tried to take my son away. And if an angel hadn’t stepped in to help me, Terry would have pulled it off.”
    Today I couldn’t deal with this. “Because you were willing totrade your son for money. This is a problem that only junkies have, Claire.”
    She looked at me and then down at the table. If she had started to cry, I could have told myself that I was trying to wake her up, help her admit what a mess she’d made of her life. But as Wade and I left the table and Claire sat there, I knew that wasn’t it. I wasn’t trying to help Claire, just like Claire couldn’t help me. I’d hurt her only because I wanted to hurt her.

AFTER I DROPPED OFF WADE for