Keep Quiet(2)

“No, it’s not that. I forgot. I’ll bring him next time.”

“Don’t. He’ll drool on the seats. We must keep the machine pristine.” Ryan paused as he read the screen. “You mind if I keep texting? I want to stay with this convo.”

“It’s okay, do your thing.” Jake steered around the back of the King of Prussia mall, where the lights of JCPenney, Macy’s, and Neiman Marcus brightened a cloudy night sky. Cars were rushing everywhere; it was Friday night, the busy beginning to the weekend. It should have been colder for February, but it wasn’t. A light fog thickened the air, and Jake remembered something he had learned tonight from the pretty weathergirl on TV.

Fog is a cloud on the ground.

He turned the defrost to maximum and accelerated toward Route 202, heading for open road. Ryan texted away, his hip-hop ringtone going off at regular intervals, punctuated by the Apple-generated swoosh. Jake wondered if his son was talking to the mystery girl. He himself remembered racking up huge phone bills when he first dated Pam, at college. He’d fallen for her their freshman year at Pitt and felt unbelievably lucky when she married him. She was a great wife, and he gave her total credit for Ryan being so well-adjusted and popular, despite his naturally reserved manner. He was earning A’s in AP courses, got solid SAT scores, and was already being recruited by college basketball programs, some Division I.

Jake switched into the slow lane, heading for the exit. He wanted to ask Ryan about the girls, but he’d warm up first. “So, how was the movie?”

“Good. Like I said.”

“Oh, right.” Jake forgot, he had asked that already. “How’s Caleb? And Raj and Benjamin?” He wanted to show he remembered the names.

“Fine.”

“Everybody ready for the finals?”

“Yep.”

Jake was getting nowhere fast. He still wanted to know about the girls, and according to Pam, the trick with Ryan was to act like you didn’t care about the answer to the question you’d asked, or you’d never get an answer. So he said, offhandedly, “By the way, who were those girls at the movie?”

Ryan didn’t look up from his phone, his thumbs in overdrive. Pink and green bubbles popped onto his phone screen, so he was texting with more than one person, like a conference call for teenagers.

“Ryan?” Jake tried again. “The girls at the movie, who were they?”

“Girls from school.”

“Oh. Friends?”

“Yeah.” Ryan still didn’t look up.

“Nice.” Jake let it go, an epic fail, in the vernacular. He pressed a button to lower the window, breathing in the moist, cool air. The fog was thickening, softening the blackness of the night, and the traffic dropped off as they approached the Concordia Corporate Center. They passed glowing signs for SMS and Microsoft, then turned onto Concordia Boulevard, which was lined with longer-stay hotels. He’d eaten enough of their reception-desk chocolate chip cookies to last a lifetime, because even his out-of-town clients were in the suburbs, the new home of American business.

Jake returned to his thoughts. His own office was in a nearby corporate center, and he spent his days ping-ponging between his corporate center and his clients’ corporate centers, after which he drove home to his housing development. Some days the only trees he saw were builder’s-grade evergreens, planted in zigzag patterns. Lately he felt as if his life were developed, rather than lived. He was a financial planner, but he was coming to believe that too much planning wasn’t natural for trees or accountants.

Fog misted the windshield, and the wipers went on to clear his view, and Ryan chuckled softly. “Dad, this car is sick. I love how it wipes the windshield automatically.”

“Me, too.” Jake grinned, feeling the spark of a reconnection. They both liked cars, and last year, when Jake’s old Tahoe hit 132,000 miles, he’d bought the Audi, mainly because Ryan had lobbied for one. Jake was a born Chevy guy, but Ryan had built umpteen online versions of the flashy Audi on the company website and designed what he called a “dream machine”—an A6 sedan with a 3.0 liter engine, Brilliant Black exterior, Black leather interior, and Brushed Aluminum inlay on the dashboard. They’d gone together to pick it up, and Jake had given Ryan a few driving lessons in it, when Ryan had the time.

“Dude.” Ryan shifted forward, sliding the phone into his jacket pocket. “We’re coming up on Pike Road. Can I drive?”

Jake checked the dashboard clock, which read 11:15. “You’re not supposed to drive after eleven o’clock. You only have a learner’s permit.”

“But Dad, I’ve had it for five months already. I only have one month left before I can get my license. I did fifty-five out of the sixty-five hours, and all the nighttime driving hours and bad-weather hours. And you’re with me, you’re an adult.”

“It doesn’t matter, technically.”

Ryan deflated. “Oh, come on, there’s never traffic on Pike, not on the weekends. I can do it, Dad. You know I’m an excellent driver.”

“We’ll see when we get to Pike. If there’s people around, no.” Jake wanted to keep the conversational momentum going, especially when Ryan’s ringtone started up again. “So. It sounds like you’re in demand tonight.”

“I’m blowing up.” Ryan smiled.