Not small fry like Corcoran, Inc., scrambling to save a few measly hundreds of thousands of dollars from going down the toilet.
Small fry!—that prick Greenbaum, insulting Jerome Corcoran his own client, to his face. And Corky buying him lunch, which wasn’t cheap.
Corky decides suddenly he has been insulted. Maybe Greenbaum was humoring him, too, about his gambling?—his investments? Wouldn’t surprise Corky, Greenbaum has some deal cooking, some scam, of his own.
Ross Drummond’s joke: Know why you can never trust a Jew lawyer? and Charlotte winced, and Corky bit, asked why, and Drummond said, barking with laughter, Because you can’t trust a lawyer—any lawyer.
Corky’d laughed, too. So, he was crude?—is? The joke is funny.
Downtown Union City. Friday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend. Traffic. Buses. Corky’s eye is snagged by people waiting for buses, out of ten there’s only two whites, one of the black women is tall and what they call statuesque, breasts big as both of Corky’s outspread hands, terrific ass, fits in those gold lamé slacks like she’s been poured in them, yes but she’s too tall: must be six feet: looking down at him, and, in bed, just too much. Not that Corky’s had the experience of finding any woman too much for him, too much flesh, he’s avoided the problem.
And never any black woman, either. Not one. All these years.
He’d come close, with Marilee Plummer, but she’s the kind of bright young ambitious woman, the kind coming up now, even the black ones are white. And Marilee’s skin so creamy, so much white blood in her, ridiculous to call such skin black.
At Union and Sutter there’s the old Woolworth’s, still in business. Where for a wild nightmare three weeks, one Christmas-shopping season, Corky’d worked, aged fourteen, hours at a stretch in the crummy ill-lit concrete-walled basement unpacking crap goods, Christmas shit, inhaling dust and chaff-like bits of excelsior. Up the block is the regal old Hotel Statler, in receivership in the mid-1970s then bailed out, renovated and refurbished and now a classy place again, Corky drops by for breakfast two or three times a week, sits in a booth reading the papers, sipping coffee, plotting his day. Uses the barbershop there, the shoeshine service. One of the numerous places around town where Corky Corcoran’s known, and liked.
American flags flying along Union Boulevard, whipping in the wind. All the larger merchants, the hotels, banks. Memorial Day that meant so much to Tim Corcoran, a day he’d for sure get drunk, out of happiness and gratitude for being alive a man gets drunk. Embarrassing to a kid, a grown man crying in the cemetery amid the rows of little flapping flags, just cloth on a stick, yes but if Corky could have his father back, now: his father: his.
Corky’s passing the site of the old Slattery Bros., razed in the 1960s and replaced by a new building, all of it Slattery-owned property still, prime Union City real estate. Up into the late 1950s Slattery Bros. was Union City’s high-quality department store, an emphasis on women’s clothes, fine furs. The ranch-mink jacket Tim Corcoran gave Theresa that Christmas-before-the-last came from Slattery Bros., and the fox stole, with the fox head, beady-glass eyes, for Grandma Corcoran, from Slattery’s. Theresa and her women friends shopped at Slattery’s. It was known that Oscar Slattery’s father and uncles, wealthy merchants from the 1940s onward, had made their original bundle during Prohibition, had a hand in bootlegging and rum-running out of Canada like certain of Corky’s kin, though on a grander scale. With more conspicuous results. Like old Joe Kennedy, patriarch of America’s first family. Yes, and why not?—even the awed first settlers must have caught on, this New World is here for the grabbing.
“H’lo, Mr. Corcoran!”
Corky gives the keys to the Caddy to the attendant at Empire Parking around the corner from his office, it’s the second time today Corky’s driven in here, a man in a hurry, a man with appointments, a man who, if you were a parking garage attendant like Bix, a greyhound-lean young black man, you’d want to emulate—wouldn’t you? So Corky sees himself, not always at ease with the vision, mirrored in others’ heads. “Right, Bix. How’s it going?”—a grin and a wave as Mr. Corcoran’s walking away.
Shit, he is worth $2 million. And maybe more.
As soon as the recession lifts, and property values bounce back up—for sure. As soon as it’s a seller’s market again.
It’s a half-block and around the corner to 773 South State. Past a wig shop, a discount video-CD store, some dusty vacant windows, a peanut vendor in dark glasses, and, on busier and more prosperous South State, a men’s clothing store and a restaurant-bar called Smithy’s where some of the City Hall crowd eats, not upper management, nor the clerical staff, but midlevel, assistant prosecutors, deputy mayors, detectives. A good place for a quick meeting but, most days, Smithy’s isn’t classy enough for Corky Corcoran.
773 South State is one of the older buildings in this, the old business sector of Union City. The financial district since the mid-1800s. Corky’s proud to be located here, it’s what you mean when you say you have an office downtown. Though the building in which he rents is probably not going to last out the decade. It’s only nine floors which makes it a midget amid the glassy high-rises, Bank of America, First Fidelity, Union Trust, still the place has dignity, Corky thinks, built in 1922 in that style known as Chicago Commercial—big, broad windows, square pilasters, even (hidden beneath the grime and pigeon shit) geometrical brick patterning in the facade.
Corcoran, Inc., is on the ninth floor. Located here since 1977 when Corky decided, in the face of much pressure from both his father-in-law and his wife, no thanks, he didn’t want to be a junior partner of Ross Drummond’s, despite the obvious advantages. (Drummond must be worth somewhere beyond $20 million. Once you’ve got that much, you have to be a real asshole to lose it, and Drummond, for all you’d say about the old bastard, is no asshole.) But Corky for sure didn’t want his father-in-law, or anybody, looking over his shoulder.
Corky loves 773 South State, loves the offices of Corcoran, Inc. But mornings are the best time, arriving here early, before the office staff, before even Miriam Dunne who sometimes arrives as early as eight A.M.—“Just to get a head start on the day.” (Miriam has a degree in accounting and bookkeeping from St. Rose College. She does routine office business while Corky reserves for himself the bigger and trickier projects.) Corky’s day begins as early as he can manage, with or without the residue of a hangover, yes but he’s been cutting back on his drinking lately, since Christina, since he had a close call maybe a year ago cruising at four A.M. on the Expressway and his car swerved out of its lane and nearly struck a concrete wall, he’ll get to the office before eight A.M., loves the look of the stately four-inch gold-leaf CORCORAN, INC. on the frosted-glass outer door marked 901.
A man needs his own office, his own space. A sacred space.
A man among men, in the money-world. Which is (maybe) the real world.
Corky figures, there’s the love-world, and there’s the money-world. A man has got to have his space in both but, if it’s a choice, maybe the money-world’s it.
So he’ll arrive at Corcoran, Inc., early, and always he’s excited, he’s hopeful. It’s disappointing that one by one other tenants are moving out of 773 South State, the ninth floor is only half-occupied now, four other tenants and the antiquated lavatories Corcoran, Inc., shares with them are getting seriously shabby. But Corky can rent three moderately good-sized rooms here, the rent’s reasonable for downtown. His inner office has a corner view, two windows, through a narrow slice of space he can even see some of Dominion Bridge, a southern exposure so on clear days the brightness pours warm as honey against his face, hands. Sometimes Corky will sit there and, odd for him, who’s so restless by nature, stare out, dreamy, content. Now I’m here, I’m here.
Where he is he doesn’t know, or why, or where he’s going, but, shit, he is here. And content.
Except when he rushes in late, delayed by traffic. Or when he’s frantic and furious yelling over the telephone. (He calls this “
expediting.”) Or in a wild, aggrieved state pawing through folders, documents, computer printouts, anything from IRS. Miriam Dunne, long devoted to her employer, whom she persists in calling “Mr. Corcoran,” has frequently answered a summons to his office to find him sobbing with frustration, yanking at his hair—“Miriam, they want to bust my balls! Everything’s going to hell!” Then, within an hour, Miriam might overhear him laughing on the telephone, chatting with, who knows who, a pal, Mr. Corcoran seems to have a lot of friends of the kind you laugh with, and sometimes, she guesses, they’re women. Much of Corcoran, Inc.’s, business is done by telephone, and much is done by Mr. Corcoran out of the office, but Mrs. Miriam Dunne is sure, she’d swear, and the same thing goes for the secretary-receptionist Jacky, that all of the transactions are legal.
Why are Miriam Dunne and Jacky Ferenzi so devoted to Jerome Corcoran?—well, the man’s sweet, he’s funny, he’s a little crazy, he’s kind and generous and even a little spendthrift, takes them out to lunch every few weeks and always for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, gives them time off with pay when they need it, asks about their families and seems to remember what they’ve said, he’s a tease, in fact a terrible tease, sometimes it’s almost too much, “Don’t fax with me, girls!” Mr. Corcoran has called out breezily more times than you could count since the new fax machine was delivered, he’s short-tempered too as a spoiled child, and secretive, used to be he’d lock himself away in that inner office of his drinking till he passed out, yes and it’s pretty clear he has another office somewhere in the city and another business, part of his secrecy, he has affairs with married women, he’s a gambler and mixes with low-life, he’ll work you too hard forgetting what time it is and next day won’t show up until afternoon, he’s always losing things on his desk and blaming you, he’s careless but thinks himself fastidious, forgetful but thinks his memory is perfect, yes but he is generous and kindhearted and in a man, for a woman, that’s the main thing, and of course his battered-handsome freckled face, his wide-set hazel eyes, so hopeful, women have fallen for hopeful since the world began.
All this, or anyway much of this, Corky knows, and takes advantage of.
Though never, now, not for the past ten years, has he come on to any hired help. Before Jacky there was Kim, and before Kim there was Bonnie, and Bonnie, sullen-pretty gum-chewing Bonnie was the last secretary of his Corky fucked, the first time right there in his office, on the old elephant-colored leather sofa once the property of Corcoran Brothers Construction Co., amid the girl’s breathless squeals and giggles and Corky’s groans, God you’re beautiful! beautiful! which was true, her young big-nippled breasts, her smooth-fattish stomach and thighs and platinum-blond bush, or anyway true at the time. Like rabbits they’d fucked on the creaking sofa, and in Corky’s car (at that time a Mustang convertible, lipstick-red), and in the Hotel Statler, and in the new tacky-glamorous Marriott on the lake, and in suburban motels, and once by romantic moonlight in Dundonald Park beyond the old rotting baseball bleachers where as a kid Corky’d played softball with his old, lost friends, and then, a few quick months later, when the fucking soured and Bonnie spoke with alternating hurt and sarcasm of commitment, and wasn’t so beautiful, nor even in a mood to pretend to be so, Corky’d had no choice but to goad her into quitting, yes he paid her off generously, he isn’t that kind of male chauvinist prick, but the strain of the affair was too much, in this small office, where he had to worry about Miriam Dunne knowing, as at home with Charlotte, where he had to worry about Charlotte knowing, Christ! too much.
So Jerome Corcoran is an employer who makes it a principle never to date anyone on his payroll. Never never, it only explodes in your face. He speaks of sexual harassment with disdain and distaste, that buzzword of the media since the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill hearings—in fact, at the time of the hearings, Corky came out strong for Anita Hill.
Surprised, though, that Miriam Dunne took a prissier, more skeptical stand. She’d said a woman should have more pride than Anita Hill had—“A woman should be a lady and if she can’t be, if it’s that kind of office, she should quit. Right away.”
Which leaves the matter ambiguous: did Miriam know about little Bonnie, after all?
Corky uses the men’s lavatory on the ninth floor, unleashes a cascading stream of burning shit, he is anxious, he’s been anxious all day, maybe through the night after Thalia made that call, left that garbled message on his tape, It’s me, Thalia, I . . . and then a long pause so Corky thought she’d hung up, then I need to talk to you . . . her voice faint, almost inaudible.
And this deceit of Christina’s, he’ll never forgive.
When Corky enters Corcoran, Inc., there’s a waning afternoon light slantwise on the receptionist’s desktop, no one at his desk since Miriam’s at her own in the second office, he can hear her talking on the phone, querying, “What? Please say that again? What?” Corky’s eye takes in, admiring, can’t help but admire, the stylish office furniture in this outer office, room, forty percent discount from a wholesaler he knows, never pay top dollar for anything: repeat, anything.
Aged eighteen, elected treasurer of his senior class at St. Thomas, Corky’d been shrewd enough to bargain for, not kickbacks exactly, you wouldn’t call them kickbacks, arrangements is a more accurate term, dealing with the jeweler who supplied the senior rings, and the printer who printed the yearbook, and the caterer for the senior prom, and one or two other local merchants eager to get contracts with St. Thomas. Where there’s a tradition of kids’ parents (or anyway most of them) having money they’re not reluctant to spend for high quality.
On the wall behind the receptionist’s desk is a blown-up map of Union City and suburbs with big red pins, and quite a few of these, prominently marking properties owned by Corcoran, Inc. On a side wall is a large bulletin board lavishly layered with eye-catching items: a feature from the Journal depicting Corky as one of six “Good Citizens of 1989” as chosen by the Union City Chamber of Commerce; glossy photos of Corky smiling and dapper as an Irish maitre d’ in black tie shaking hands with, among others, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Caucus, the president of the Union City Mission Society, the Jesuit head of St. Thomas Aquinas, the officers (lovely, rich) of the Union City Junior League, the head of the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on Human Resources, such VIPs as New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (the occasion was a fund-raising dinner at the Statler for Dukakis’s ill-fated presidential campaign, to which Corky contributed $5000), the majority leader of the New York State Legislature Whitney Post, and of course Mayor Oscar Slattery and U.S. Representative Vic Slattery. Prominent too in the room, quick to catch the drifting eye, are shiny brass plaques, framed certificates and citations, a two-foot pseudo-bronze bowling trophy atop a bookshelf, a cluster of snapshots and Polaroids, some new, most faded, of victory celebrations, charity bazaars, church suppers, firemen’s picnics, New Year’s Eve at the Mayor’s residence, excursions on the lake, a Fourth of July in the Adirondacks, each with Corky Corcoran smiling happily at the camera. So many terrific occasions! So many terrific friends! One of the Polaroids, taken at a fund-raising auction for the Maiden Vale Library last fall shows, as if by chance, Corky beside a striking woman with black hair falling swath-like to her shoulders—Christina Kavanaugh, with others.
This is Corky’s single photo of himself and Christina together and he’s standing here staring at it, fingers twitching, wondering if he should take the fucking thing down, rip it to shreds.
The morning he’d taped it to the wall, sharp-eyed Jacky at the receptionist’s desk asked, “Oh Mr. Corcoran, who is that?—she’s so strange-looking,” and Corky, annoyed, said, “‘Strange-looking’?—why?” and Jacky said, scratching her throat with her long red curving nails, “Oh I don’t know, Mr. Corcoran,” giggling embarrassed, “—like she’s Egyptian, or something. The hair. The eyes.” When Miriam saw the Polaroid, she said, with a sniff, “There’s a hard-looking woman! Brrr!”
Corky’s been approached by influential Democrats, including Oscar, over the years, sounded out about running for public office, something more ambitious than the City Council—for instance state senator. When Vic moves up (Vic’s sure to move up: one more term in the House and that’s it), Corky could take Vic’s place, U.S. Representative from the Thirty-fifth District. Or, when Oscar retires . . . who knows?
Corky always disclaims political ambition, I’m a businessman not a politician but, sure, he likes the public exposure, the applause, the heat of elections and the way you feel, when you win, you’ve put something over on somebody. The kinds of people you rub elbows with when you’re on top.
Corky pokes his head into Miriam’s office, signals her he’s back, Miriam’s on the telephone seeming vexed, schoolmarmish, bifocals on her nose, her powdery-grainy skin more lined than Corky likes to see: he and Miriam Dunne have been together so long, she’s like an older sister, almost like a mother. The kind Corky should have had instead of, poor Mother, the one he’d had.
You. Our only witness.
What I Lived For Page 18