A Very Special PSA from David Webster
Title: A Very Angry Public Service Announcement
Author: m_buggie
Fandom: “Band of Brothers”
Pairings: mentions of Liebgott/Webster and Nixon/Cathy
Word Count: 2,654
Rating: PG-13
Standard Disclaimer: This is based off performances in the HBO miniseries, not the actual soldiers. The only thing I own is the computer I wrote this on. I make no profit and mean no disrespect so please don’t sue.
Author’s Note: This takes place in the world of the Big Damn Modern Day Crossover AU of Doom…I think that says it all. Contains quotes by Albert Einstein, Lewis Carroll, and Guillermo del Toro.
~x~x~
“I feel like there should be some kind of public service announcement,” David Webster declared as if he hadn’t just changed the subject for the tenth time during their conversation and he wasn’t about to launch into a tirade about something completely different. “You know, like the sort of thing they used to do for pollution and AIDS? Anyway, there should be a public service announcement informing the general public that love/hate relationships are not nearly as attractive as pop culture and novelists would have everyone think.”
Lewis Nixon tilted his head and regarded the other young man with a raised eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling this discussion’s about to get emotional and messy?”
“Love/Hate relationships only look good on paper or in the mind’s eye,” Webster continued, completely ignoring what Nixon had just said. “I mean, the slap-slap-kiss dynamic is a trope that just doesn’t apply to any real situation; and if it does then it ends badly and not at all like the way the books tell us.”
“Never mind, I know exactly where this is going,” Nixon muttered, having found the answer to his question.
It was half past eight in the morning on a Wednesday in December and David Webster sat with Lewis Nixon in Lori’s Diner at the San Francisco International Airport, drinking coffee and picking at half-eaten sandwich specials. Nixon still hadn’t removed his aviator shades after the non-stop red-eye flight from New York to San Francisco and sported a five o’clock shadow to go with his fashionably rumpled hair. Two suitcases sat by his feet and he still hadn’t given any explanation to his old friend why he’d purchased a one way ticket to the West Coast and asked to be met at the airport.
Under normal circumstances Webster would’ve bitched and moaned a storm about the inconveniences of haughty well-to-do associates who think they can have the world arranged around them just because they have a charming smile and throw piles of money around, but in this particular case he was actually grateful for the distraction. Webster wished he was wearing a pair of sunglasses, too. It would’ve helped to cover up his eyes, puffy and blood-shot from too many hours spent not sleeping.
“It just pisses me off that there are people out there - pathetic deluded individuals who’ve obviously never experienced anything resembling an actual relationship with another human being - who think that there’s something hot and sexy about love/hate dynamics,” Web went on to say, unabated and gaining rancor in his tone with every word. “They just don’t understand. There is no sizzling sexual tension lying beneath witty insults and retorts. No smoldering and epic hate sex. There are only screaming matches until three in the morning, crap being thrown across the room, injured feelings, bruised egos, and someone inevitably sleeping on the couch. And if the couch doesn’t happen then you just lie in bed awkwardly, pushed as far to opposite sides as you can manage without falling out and trying not to touch so much as elbows and toes.
“There’s nothing sexy about that. There’s just massive amounts of stress and angst and heartache because you hate someone enough to contemplate murder and/or suicide as a means of getting the hell away from their stupid ass, but you love them too much to actually leave them and the very thought of doing that tears you up inside. And anyone who thinks that kind of a setup is attractive is either some kind of emotional sadomasochist or a fucking retard. And in the case of the latter they deserve to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes because that’s the only way they’d ever comprehend just how ass-backwards their view of a romantic relationship is.”
“What about the sadomasochists?” Nix inquired.
Web blinked and frowned, as if he’d momentarily forgotten what he’d said. “What? Oh, right.” He waved a hand dismissively. “That’s different. If causing and receiving emotional pain gets you off then that’s a whole other can of worms that I’m not touching with a ten foot pole. To each his own, you know?”
“Right, of course.”
“Of course,” Web echoed.
Nix nodded sagely, took another bite of his BLT. “So I take it that you and Joe are having problems?” he ventured.
Web exhaled deeply and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, you could say that. But you know, what else is new? It’s not like we’ve ever been stable to begin with.” He tried to laugh it off, shrug the matter away, and failed; ended up staring at his open palms like the proper course of action to remedy the situation was going to become evident among the lines and creases there. “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”
“The two of you seemed happy enough a couple months ago,” Nix remarked. “You were the Bonnie to his Clyde, after all.”
Web tried for a smirk but the expression twisted itself into a grimace. “Funny you should mention that, Nix, because Halloween was the last time I could remember being happy, you know?” He shook his head. “I really thought we were going to work out this time.”
Nix opened his mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. No, not precisely. That would be a lie. Nix could think of a thousand different things to say about how there was something inherently dysfunctional about hoping anything would work out “this time” but they all died in his throat because while Lewis Nixon was many things, a hypocrite was not one of them. And if there was anyone on the face of the planet who knew what it was like to go back and forth for years between affection and outright aggression, it was him.
“Yeah,” was all Nix said in the end, “me, too. I’m sorry, Web.”
“I just feel like such an idiot, Nix,” Web confessed. “Am I really so stupid to think that if I give Joe another chance everything will magically different and we’ll be okay?”
“You’re not dumb, David,” Nixon assured his friend, using the other young man’s given name as an indication of his seriousness. “You can be naïve about a lot of things but you’re not an idiot.” He paused, smirked. “Even if you did go to Harvard.”
Webster sighed and chuckled despite himself. “Touché.”
“You’re just an idealist,” Nix added. “And you’re a writer.”
“What’s my being a writer got to do with anything?”
Nix shook his head, smiled softly. “I know you, Web, you’ve got this certain image of yourself and your place in the world. It’s all about the aesthetics with you and trying to go through life like you’re a character in one of your stories.”
Web blurted out a feeble, “I do not,” but Nix just talked over him.
“You can’t do that, you know?” Nix said. “Real life doesn’t work that way because you can’t script what other people say or do. And sometimes there are endings that you never wanted, sometimes there’s crap that you can’t erase, but that’s life and you’ve just got to deal with it even if it does kill a little piece of you inside.”
Web sighed again, louder and heavier. “Or maybe I’m just crazy.”
“What was it that Einstein said? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Web glared at that.
“Don’t worry, we’re all mad here,” Nix then remarked, trying to summon back his rakish grin but only managing a cheerless shifting to the corners of his mouth. “I’m mad, you’re mad. If we weren’t then we wouldn’t have come here.”
“So why did you come here?” Webster asked.
Nix shrugged, his face blank and his eyes still hidden by the aviator sunglasses. “I just needed to get away for a little while.”
“Right, and you thought you’d swing through the City by the Bay? Come on, give me a break, Nix; the last time you ‘just needed to get away for a while’ you spent two weeks in Germany and a month in the Netherlands. I’ve seen you up and visit London and Paris on a whim the way most people decide to take a trip to the park or the beach.”
“What? Can’t a guy just decide to stop in on one of his oldest and dearest friends?”
“Lewis, you called me at a quarter past four in the morning to tell me that you were on a red-eye and that we should get together for breakfast. That’s not you stopping in on me, that’s you running away from something.”
It was Nix’s turn to glare but the effect was lost with his shades in place. “Nixons don’t run from anything.”
“Okay, fine, what are you passive-aggressively maneuvering away from by positioning yourself on the opposite of the country?”
Lewis Nixon carefully removed his sunglasses and folded them neatly on the table. The waitress came by and cleared away their mostly empty plates, refilled their coffees, and dropped off dessert menus just in case they were interested in banana cream pie or strawberry shortcake at nine in the morning. Nix took a deep breath.
“I got served with papers last night,” he stated.
“Yeesh, that sucks,” Webster said. “What’d you do now? Hey, maybe you could call that friend of yours, you know, the one who’s in law school. What’s his name? Compton?”
Nix shook his head. “Not those kind of papers, Web.”
“Oh.”
“Cathy wants a divorce.”
“Oh.”
“She said she’s going to take everything, too. The house, the car…the kid.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nix could only shrug in response.
They ended up not getting dessert. Somehow chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream seemed a poor complement to talk of divorce and other issues associated with long-term relationships not quite working out the way they were supposed to. They had another round of coffee and then Nixon paid their bill, left a nice tip for the waitress - it was the least he could do for dragging Webster out to SFO Airport in the morning on short notice, after all.
“I know this might sound kind of strange,” David Webster remarked as they made their way back to his car parked in the airport lot, “but I never really thought that you and Cathy would ever actually split up. I mean, yeah, the two of you fought like cats and dogs but you always made up afterwards, you know? I never thought you’d actually get divorced.”
Lewis Nixon sighed and muttered, “Yeah, tell me about it,” under his breath.
“So…Cathy’s taking the kid, huh?”
Nixon nodded. “It’s just as well, though. I mean, let’s be honest: what the fuck do I know about raising kids? Charlie will be better off with his mother, I can guarantee that.”
“Well yeah, but he’s still your son, Lew. Don’t you think…”
“The Nixon line is notorious for its fucking up in the department of father/son relations. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
Webster pursed his lips. “Okay then.” He paused. “One more thing, though…”
“What?” Nix demanded, on the verge of annoyance.
“You’re paying my parking fee, you know that, right?”
Nix sighed. “Well played, my good man, well played.”
They tossed Nix’s luggage in the trunk of Web’s car and started driving.
“Once I drop you off at the hotel my duties as your chauffeur for the day are over, okay?” Web commented.
Nix clutched at his chest in melodramatic mock-affront. “The hotel? How cold and impersonal. You mean you won’t offer to put me up for the night, week, or whatever, at your modest get trendy Nob Hill apartment?”
“Not if I want to have any shot at patching things up with Joe in the next couple of days,” Web retorted. “So where do you want to go? The Ritz-Carlton? The Mandarin Oriental? The St. Regis? The Four Seasons?”
“I’m bored with all those places,” Nix replied. “I think I’ll try the Argonaut this time.”
Web, in turn, gaped with over-exaggerated shock and horror. “What’s this? A Nixon, staying at a mere four-star hotel when there are at least half a dozen five-star hotels in the area? My God, what is this world coming to?”
“I know, I’m living dangerously.”
“Slumming it, I see?”
“You could say that.”
The two young men exchanged glances and laughed, then settled into silence as they each looked out the front window, watching the sunny morning cityscape pass them by. The mirth of the moment faded, however, as their thoughts circled back on jilted lovers and soon to be ex-wives.
“Your public service announcement,” Lewis Nixon stated, “it should be a series. The first one could be about the stupidity of love/hate relationships. The second could be about the dangers of thinking that said relationships have any kind of future, let alone marriage prospects. The third could then cover the consequences of attempting to turn a love/hate relationship into something more only to have it inevitably explode in your face with the force of a thousand thermonuclear weapons.”
David Webster sighed, long and loud and heavy. His shoulders went so far as to slump as he navigated the streets of San Francisco. He probably would’ve thumped his head against the steering wheel if not for his present company. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Don’t end up like me,” Nix said abruptly.
Web’s eyebrows went up towards his hairline. “What?”
“Don’t end up like me,” Nix repeated. “You deserve better than a vicious cycle of misery and fleeting joy. Don’t be a dumbass make the same mistakes that I made.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll make entirely new ones,” Web quipped.
“You know what I’m saying. You never thought Cathy and I would ever get divorced and now that’s exactly what we’re doing. You probably think that you and Joe will just go back and forth for the rest of your lives with cutting but humorous banter. But you can’t take anything for granted and one of these days Joe might not come back.”
“I know.”
“You say you know but I sometimes wonder if you actually do know. You know?”
“No.”
Nix shook his head and unfolded his sunglasses from his front shirt pocket, placing them back on his face. “Look, David, all I’m saying is that you should be careful because you’re a stubborn son of a bitch and always need to have the last word. And sometimes having the last word’s not worth it if the person you’re saying it to is on their way out the door. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Web said.
They pulled up to the Argonaut Hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf and Web helped his friend get the pair of suitcases out of the trunk.
“So I’ll give you a call later today, all right?” Nix said. “You know, after I get settled in and you’ve decided whether you want to pursue romantic negotiations with Mr. Liebgott tonight or say to hell with it and go out drinking with me.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Web answered. “Oh, and Nix?”
“I really am sorry about what happened with Cathy. I mean…”
Nix sighed, then smirked, then chuckled under his breath. “Don’t worry about it, Web. All it means is that you’re going to have some extra help in the scripting of your public service announcement.”
Web shook his head and sighed as he watched his friend walk into the hotel with his two bags.
“A prince without a kingdom,” David Webster murmured under his breath.
He tapped out a cigarette from the pack in his glove box and climbed back into his car, contemplating whether he wanted to head to work or just go back home and wait for Joe to return. He started up the engine and the radio came to life. A public service announcement came on. Webster turned it off.
Author: m_buggie
Fandom: “Band of Brothers”
Pairings: mentions of Liebgott/Webster and Nixon/Cathy
Word Count: 2,654
Rating: PG-13
Standard Disclaimer: This is based off performances in the HBO miniseries, not the actual soldiers. The only thing I own is the computer I wrote this on. I make no profit and mean no disrespect so please don’t sue.
Author’s Note: This takes place in the world of the Big Damn Modern Day Crossover AU of Doom…I think that says it all. Contains quotes by Albert Einstein, Lewis Carroll, and Guillermo del Toro.
~x~x~
“I feel like there should be some kind of public service announcement,” David Webster declared as if he hadn’t just changed the subject for the tenth time during their conversation and he wasn’t about to launch into a tirade about something completely different. “You know, like the sort of thing they used to do for pollution and AIDS? Anyway, there should be a public service announcement informing the general public that love/hate relationships are not nearly as attractive as pop culture and novelists would have everyone think.”
Lewis Nixon tilted his head and regarded the other young man with a raised eyebrow. “Why do I get the feeling this discussion’s about to get emotional and messy?”
“Love/Hate relationships only look good on paper or in the mind’s eye,” Webster continued, completely ignoring what Nixon had just said. “I mean, the slap-slap-kiss dynamic is a trope that just doesn’t apply to any real situation; and if it does then it ends badly and not at all like the way the books tell us.”
“Never mind, I know exactly where this is going,” Nixon muttered, having found the answer to his question.
It was half past eight in the morning on a Wednesday in December and David Webster sat with Lewis Nixon in Lori’s Diner at the San Francisco International Airport, drinking coffee and picking at half-eaten sandwich specials. Nixon still hadn’t removed his aviator shades after the non-stop red-eye flight from New York to San Francisco and sported a five o’clock shadow to go with his fashionably rumpled hair. Two suitcases sat by his feet and he still hadn’t given any explanation to his old friend why he’d purchased a one way ticket to the West Coast and asked to be met at the airport.
Under normal circumstances Webster would’ve bitched and moaned a storm about the inconveniences of haughty well-to-do associates who think they can have the world arranged around them just because they have a charming smile and throw piles of money around, but in this particular case he was actually grateful for the distraction. Webster wished he was wearing a pair of sunglasses, too. It would’ve helped to cover up his eyes, puffy and blood-shot from too many hours spent not sleeping.
“It just pisses me off that there are people out there - pathetic deluded individuals who’ve obviously never experienced anything resembling an actual relationship with another human being - who think that there’s something hot and sexy about love/hate dynamics,” Web went on to say, unabated and gaining rancor in his tone with every word. “They just don’t understand. There is no sizzling sexual tension lying beneath witty insults and retorts. No smoldering and epic hate sex. There are only screaming matches until three in the morning, crap being thrown across the room, injured feelings, bruised egos, and someone inevitably sleeping on the couch. And if the couch doesn’t happen then you just lie in bed awkwardly, pushed as far to opposite sides as you can manage without falling out and trying not to touch so much as elbows and toes.
“There’s nothing sexy about that. There’s just massive amounts of stress and angst and heartache because you hate someone enough to contemplate murder and/or suicide as a means of getting the hell away from their stupid ass, but you love them too much to actually leave them and the very thought of doing that tears you up inside. And anyone who thinks that kind of a setup is attractive is either some kind of emotional sadomasochist or a fucking retard. And in the case of the latter they deserve to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes because that’s the only way they’d ever comprehend just how ass-backwards their view of a romantic relationship is.”
“What about the sadomasochists?” Nix inquired.
Web blinked and frowned, as if he’d momentarily forgotten what he’d said. “What? Oh, right.” He waved a hand dismissively. “That’s different. If causing and receiving emotional pain gets you off then that’s a whole other can of worms that I’m not touching with a ten foot pole. To each his own, you know?”
“Right, of course.”
“Of course,” Web echoed.
Nix nodded sagely, took another bite of his BLT. “So I take it that you and Joe are having problems?” he ventured.
Web exhaled deeply and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, you could say that. But you know, what else is new? It’s not like we’ve ever been stable to begin with.” He tried to laugh it off, shrug the matter away, and failed; ended up staring at his open palms like the proper course of action to remedy the situation was going to become evident among the lines and creases there. “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”
“The two of you seemed happy enough a couple months ago,” Nix remarked. “You were the Bonnie to his Clyde, after all.”
Web tried for a smirk but the expression twisted itself into a grimace. “Funny you should mention that, Nix, because Halloween was the last time I could remember being happy, you know?” He shook his head. “I really thought we were going to work out this time.”
Nix opened his mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. No, not precisely. That would be a lie. Nix could think of a thousand different things to say about how there was something inherently dysfunctional about hoping anything would work out “this time” but they all died in his throat because while Lewis Nixon was many things, a hypocrite was not one of them. And if there was anyone on the face of the planet who knew what it was like to go back and forth for years between affection and outright aggression, it was him.
“Yeah,” was all Nix said in the end, “me, too. I’m sorry, Web.”
“I just feel like such an idiot, Nix,” Web confessed. “Am I really so stupid to think that if I give Joe another chance everything will magically different and we’ll be okay?”
“You’re not dumb, David,” Nixon assured his friend, using the other young man’s given name as an indication of his seriousness. “You can be naïve about a lot of things but you’re not an idiot.” He paused, smirked. “Even if you did go to Harvard.”
Webster sighed and chuckled despite himself. “Touché.”
“You’re just an idealist,” Nix added. “And you’re a writer.”
“What’s my being a writer got to do with anything?”
Nix shook his head, smiled softly. “I know you, Web, you’ve got this certain image of yourself and your place in the world. It’s all about the aesthetics with you and trying to go through life like you’re a character in one of your stories.”
Web blurted out a feeble, “I do not,” but Nix just talked over him.
“You can’t do that, you know?” Nix said. “Real life doesn’t work that way because you can’t script what other people say or do. And sometimes there are endings that you never wanted, sometimes there’s crap that you can’t erase, but that’s life and you’ve just got to deal with it even if it does kill a little piece of you inside.”
Web sighed again, louder and heavier. “Or maybe I’m just crazy.”
“What was it that Einstein said? Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Web glared at that.
“Don’t worry, we’re all mad here,” Nix then remarked, trying to summon back his rakish grin but only managing a cheerless shifting to the corners of his mouth. “I’m mad, you’re mad. If we weren’t then we wouldn’t have come here.”
“So why did you come here?” Webster asked.
Nix shrugged, his face blank and his eyes still hidden by the aviator sunglasses. “I just needed to get away for a little while.”
“Right, and you thought you’d swing through the City by the Bay? Come on, give me a break, Nix; the last time you ‘just needed to get away for a while’ you spent two weeks in Germany and a month in the Netherlands. I’ve seen you up and visit London and Paris on a whim the way most people decide to take a trip to the park or the beach.”
“What? Can’t a guy just decide to stop in on one of his oldest and dearest friends?”
“Lewis, you called me at a quarter past four in the morning to tell me that you were on a red-eye and that we should get together for breakfast. That’s not you stopping in on me, that’s you running away from something.”
It was Nix’s turn to glare but the effect was lost with his shades in place. “Nixons don’t run from anything.”
“Okay, fine, what are you passive-aggressively maneuvering away from by positioning yourself on the opposite of the country?”
Lewis Nixon carefully removed his sunglasses and folded them neatly on the table. The waitress came by and cleared away their mostly empty plates, refilled their coffees, and dropped off dessert menus just in case they were interested in banana cream pie or strawberry shortcake at nine in the morning. Nix took a deep breath.
“I got served with papers last night,” he stated.
“Yeesh, that sucks,” Webster said. “What’d you do now? Hey, maybe you could call that friend of yours, you know, the one who’s in law school. What’s his name? Compton?”
Nix shook his head. “Not those kind of papers, Web.”
“Oh.”
“Cathy wants a divorce.”
“Oh.”
“She said she’s going to take everything, too. The house, the car…the kid.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry.”
Nix could only shrug in response.
They ended up not getting dessert. Somehow chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream seemed a poor complement to talk of divorce and other issues associated with long-term relationships not quite working out the way they were supposed to. They had another round of coffee and then Nixon paid their bill, left a nice tip for the waitress - it was the least he could do for dragging Webster out to SFO Airport in the morning on short notice, after all.
“I know this might sound kind of strange,” David Webster remarked as they made their way back to his car parked in the airport lot, “but I never really thought that you and Cathy would ever actually split up. I mean, yeah, the two of you fought like cats and dogs but you always made up afterwards, you know? I never thought you’d actually get divorced.”
Lewis Nixon sighed and muttered, “Yeah, tell me about it,” under his breath.
“So…Cathy’s taking the kid, huh?”
Nixon nodded. “It’s just as well, though. I mean, let’s be honest: what the fuck do I know about raising kids? Charlie will be better off with his mother, I can guarantee that.”
“Well yeah, but he’s still your son, Lew. Don’t you think…”
“The Nixon line is notorious for its fucking up in the department of father/son relations. Let’s just leave it at that, okay?”
Webster pursed his lips. “Okay then.” He paused. “One more thing, though…”
“What?” Nix demanded, on the verge of annoyance.
“You’re paying my parking fee, you know that, right?”
Nix sighed. “Well played, my good man, well played.”
They tossed Nix’s luggage in the trunk of Web’s car and started driving.
“Once I drop you off at the hotel my duties as your chauffeur for the day are over, okay?” Web commented.
Nix clutched at his chest in melodramatic mock-affront. “The hotel? How cold and impersonal. You mean you won’t offer to put me up for the night, week, or whatever, at your modest get trendy Nob Hill apartment?”
“Not if I want to have any shot at patching things up with Joe in the next couple of days,” Web retorted. “So where do you want to go? The Ritz-Carlton? The Mandarin Oriental? The St. Regis? The Four Seasons?”
“I’m bored with all those places,” Nix replied. “I think I’ll try the Argonaut this time.”
Web, in turn, gaped with over-exaggerated shock and horror. “What’s this? A Nixon, staying at a mere four-star hotel when there are at least half a dozen five-star hotels in the area? My God, what is this world coming to?”
“I know, I’m living dangerously.”
“Slumming it, I see?”
“You could say that.”
The two young men exchanged glances and laughed, then settled into silence as they each looked out the front window, watching the sunny morning cityscape pass them by. The mirth of the moment faded, however, as their thoughts circled back on jilted lovers and soon to be ex-wives.
“Your public service announcement,” Lewis Nixon stated, “it should be a series. The first one could be about the stupidity of love/hate relationships. The second could be about the dangers of thinking that said relationships have any kind of future, let alone marriage prospects. The third could then cover the consequences of attempting to turn a love/hate relationship into something more only to have it inevitably explode in your face with the force of a thousand thermonuclear weapons.”
David Webster sighed, long and loud and heavy. His shoulders went so far as to slump as he navigated the streets of San Francisco. He probably would’ve thumped his head against the steering wheel if not for his present company. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Don’t end up like me,” Nix said abruptly.
Web’s eyebrows went up towards his hairline. “What?”
“Don’t end up like me,” Nix repeated. “You deserve better than a vicious cycle of misery and fleeting joy. Don’t be a dumbass make the same mistakes that I made.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll make entirely new ones,” Web quipped.
“You know what I’m saying. You never thought Cathy and I would ever get divorced and now that’s exactly what we’re doing. You probably think that you and Joe will just go back and forth for the rest of your lives with cutting but humorous banter. But you can’t take anything for granted and one of these days Joe might not come back.”
“I know.”
“You say you know but I sometimes wonder if you actually do know. You know?”
“No.”
Nix shook his head and unfolded his sunglasses from his front shirt pocket, placing them back on his face. “Look, David, all I’m saying is that you should be careful because you’re a stubborn son of a bitch and always need to have the last word. And sometimes having the last word’s not worth it if the person you’re saying it to is on their way out the door. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Web said.
They pulled up to the Argonaut Hotel at Fisherman’s Wharf and Web helped his friend get the pair of suitcases out of the trunk.
“So I’ll give you a call later today, all right?” Nix said. “You know, after I get settled in and you’ve decided whether you want to pursue romantic negotiations with Mr. Liebgott tonight or say to hell with it and go out drinking with me.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Web answered. “Oh, and Nix?”
“I really am sorry about what happened with Cathy. I mean…”
Nix sighed, then smirked, then chuckled under his breath. “Don’t worry about it, Web. All it means is that you’re going to have some extra help in the scripting of your public service announcement.”
Web shook his head and sighed as he watched his friend walk into the hotel with his two bags.
“A prince without a kingdom,” David Webster murmured under his breath.
He tapped out a cigarette from the pack in his glove box and climbed back into his car, contemplating whether he wanted to head to work or just go back home and wait for Joe to return. He started up the engine and the radio came to life. A public service announcement came on. Webster turned it off.