The Man Who Came Uptown

He cut his eyes away from her and said, “I’m gonna go read some.”

“I’ll call you when it’s ready,” she said.

Brandy got up from her little bed and followed him to the steps. He started up the stairs and heard Brandy whine. She wanted to go with him but could no longer climb to the second floor. He went back down, gathered Brandy in his arms, and carried her up to his bedroom. He sat on the bed. The dog settled at his feet.

Michael looked across the room at the trophies on his brother’s dresser. Thomas, who always did right and had made his place in the world as a productive man. And there was his sister, about to graduate college, already looking ahead at a career in public relations.

Michael glanced at his own dresser. In its top drawer, beneath his underwear, was an envelope containing two thousand dollars in cash. Phil Ornazian had doubled his pay.

Michael hadn’t spent a dime of it. He didn’t care to look at it or touch it. If he had someone to talk to, he’d say that it was blood money. But he’d taken it. He sure hadn’t turned it down. And he suspected that Ornazian would be throwing a shadow on his doorstep again.

He needed to talk to a friend. Anna immediately came to mind. As he thought of her, something moved inside him.

Michael propped a pillow under his head. He opened his book, Northline, and began to read. He was deeper into the novel now.

In the book, Allison Johnson has given up her baby for adoption and moved to Reno, Nevada, where she works as a waitress on the graveyard shift in a casino restaurant. She also works part-time in telephone sales with an obese, upbeat woman named Penny. Allison is still drinking heavily and distraught about her child. One night, drunk, she is taken to a house by two men in suits, has sex with both of them, and asks one of the men to beat her. She contemplates suicide. The father of her child, Jimmy Bodie, is threatening to come find her. Her life has come apart. And yet... a scarred, sweet-natured young man named Dan Mahony often sits at her station at the restaurant and makes small talk. He buys her a snow globe on a trip he makes to San Francisco. He treats her to coffee and tries to chat her up. She lies to him about her family and her past. She tells him she doesn’t want a boyfriend and he takes it in stride. Clearly, he’s smitten. But Allison is not ready to enter into a relationship again, because she’s not yet right with herself. Binge-drinking in a bar, she passes out and hits her head. When she comes to, she is carried home by a kindly bartender and his wife.

As Michael read the book, he felt the pain and struggles of Allison Johnson. He was in her pathetic motel room, listening to her Patti Page and Brenda Lee records, hearing her imaginary conversations with that old-time actor Paul Newman. He could see Reno, a smaller, quieter version of Vegas, with its low-rent casinos, chicken-fried-steak specials, laundromats, wood-paneled bars, end-of-the-road hopefuls, and neon signs that bled colors out to the street.

He closed his eyes and imagined it. The book had taken him somewhere else. He was outside himself and his troubled mind.