Two Time by Chris Knopf Page A

the road some distance away, meant his forward velocity was in the neighborhood of a hundred and ten miles an hour. You could hardly blame the tree for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thechairman of the Society even asserted that Bobby’s estate should cover the cost of a tree surgeon. Bobby’s widow, being a lawyer, advised the chairman and others of like opinion that any payment from her would coincide with a cold day in hell. It was a painful way to launch her legal career, but indicative of the type of law you practiced out on the East End of Long Island.
    Bobby left her a house he’d built himself on a heavily wooded flag lot about a half-mile down the road from the old oak tree. He wasn’t much of a carpenter, so Jackie didn’t end up with much of a house. It was a 3,500-square-foot box sheathed in vertical rough-hewn batten and board cedar that was supposed to turn a weathered gray but by now was mostly mildewy black. There was no trim on the casement windows, or exterior architectural detail of any kind. Jackie still drove Bobby’s Toyota pickup with oversized wheels and big lumber racks welded to the frame. I parked the Grand Prix next to it in the driveway and rang her doorbell.
    It usually took her about half a second to answer, so it felt funny standing there waiting. Maybe my doorbell karma wasn’t what it used to be. Years of misanthropy catching up. When the door opened, it was a crack.
    “Hello out there.”
    “Jackie, it’s Sam.”
    She swung the door open like she did in the old days, with authority.
    “Sam. A sight for.”
    “Sore eyes?”
    “Yeah. Especially this one,” she said, pointing to the massive bandage on her head.
    Since I’d seen her the week before they’d done some more work on her. She was wearing something new, kind of a white helmet with a cap and chin strap that covered mostof the left side of her face. The right side was black and blue, which she’d tried to soften with face powder. Jackie’s proudest feature was a mane of wild, tightly curled strawberry-blond hair. Now contained, it made her face seem small and strangely defenseless. There was an opening in the bandage at the back of her neck that set free a shock of blazing frizz, but all that did was call attention to its overall absence, advertising the tragedy.
    We stood in her doorway looking at each other until I had the sense to realize she was crying. The kind of thing I was always late to see.
    “Ah, Sam,” she said, and fell forward into my arms. I held her with my hand resting on the back of her head, letting her cry into my shirt. I didn’t know exactly what else to do, so I just stood there with her in the doorway and waited it out.
    “So you’re doin’ great, huh?” I said, when the sobbing slowed down.
    “Couldn’t be better,” she mumbled into my chest. “Top o’ the world.”
    “Nice to hear. Wanna sit down? Lie down? Curl in a ball?”
    “You hate this, don’t you. Having to act like you’re sympathetic.”
    “Not a lot of practice.”
    “I know. I’m so damn dumb.”
    “No, you’re chatty. Dumb means mute. Wordless, silent. At best reticent, laconic and taciturn. You’re none of those things.”
    She pulled back and wiped off her good eye with the back of her hand. She picked at the bandage.
    “I’m getting this thing all soggy. What do you think?”
    “It’s a look.”
    She turned and took my hand and pulled me into her chaotic mess of a living room. We had to pick our wayaround gigantic piles of magazines and God knows what else, and a collection of engorged cardboard boxes that might have been storage, or might have been furniture. Eventually we reached the massive white sofas that anchored the center of the room, and dropped down into the cushions.
    “Wow. That was great,” she said. “Should’ve done that a while ago.”
    “I always love a good cry.”
    “You’ve never cried in your life, you thug.”
    “Yeah, but I’d love it if I did.”
    She