The Speed of Life

by James Victor Jordan

  He’s had a brain-stem stroke. After three months, he can only move his eyes and can’t feel anything below his ears. The morphine drip keeps him calm but does nothing to extinguish the inferno of a migraine more severe than any he could ever have imagined.

  On most days soft breezes and the scent of flowers fill his room, but on this day the air is as still as a dead man’s breath. A fly hovers over him, its buzz growing louder until it’s deafening. He closes his eyes.

  He was thirteen, holding his mother’s hand at his father’s funeral, standing under an umbrella in Lakeside Memorial Park.

  He opens his eyes. In his hospital room, the fly crawls into his ear, pricking his desiccated skin. Grinding pain renders him blind. He shuts his eyes.

  At his father’s funeral the rabbi said, “Chief Petty Officer Arnold Rosen was a hero.” Even though it was raining, it was hot, and the sun was brilliant. Raindrops on his father’s coffin refracted daylight into rainbows. A rainbow spectrum scraped the sky, sounding a note, the tones blending harmoniously into chords, which progressed into a requiem that crescendoed. Swans glided across the lake. Spirits roamed, ghosts on horseback paraded. The wreaths beside the grave were drenched, reeking of decay.

  Mourners crowded the graveside: his friend Andy Ross and his parents, Dolores and Kermit, and Ryan Hunter and his parents. Across the grave from where he stood, Hailey, skinny, also thirteen, held her father’s hand. She hadn’t known his father well but sobbed as if she had. His father’s ghost stood beside her. She leaned against the wraith, wiping tears from her cheeks.

  After the Kaddish, as the others walked to their cars, he remained by the grave. Someone approached.

  “Al?” Hailey said. It wasn’t her thirteen-year-old voice he heard.

  He opens his eyes. In his hospital room, unable to move, he panics. He closes his eyes.

  Again Hailey said, “Al?” They weren’t in the cemetery. He and Hailey were thirty, married nine months. The Spring semester at the high school where she taught English had just ended. She stood near her packed suitcase in their Coconut Grove apartment, wearing red fuck-me pumps and a slinky dress that said: sex but not with you. He was aroused nonetheless by the freckles on her cleavage, the shape of her runner’s legs, the golden streaks in her auburn curls.

  “Hailey, please— we’re going to make this work.”

  “After nine months of marriage, it’s not supposed to be work!”

  Ché, their African-Gray parrot, squawked. “It’s off to work we go.” The parrot hung upside down. “Al’s a sad sack.”

  He stared at the bird, incredulous. Hailey laughed. “When did you learn to say that?” she said and opened the cage. Ché hopped into her arms and she rocked him like a baby.

  When was the last time she’d held him?

  “Let’s sing,” Ché squawked.

  His eyes open. Jacob, tall, strong like Al had been, stands near his hospital bed. In the fall his son will be a senior, but he hasn’t spoken about his SAT scores, college applications, or Al’s crimes. Maybe he doesn’t know. “Aurora sent these,” Jacob says, arranging wildflowers in a vase.

  When he was in the navy, Aurora had served together on the board of their synagogue. During hospital visits, Aurora, like Hailey, often reads to him. Unlike Hailey, Aurora hasn’t mentioned his crimes. Yet.

  “Want to listen to music?” Jacob says.

  Al blinks once and Jacob puts a CD – American Beauty – into a player. The Grateful Dead sing, “This is all a dream we dreamed/One afternoon long ago.” His eyes close.

  In their Coconut Grove apartment on the day Hailey left him, she played with her parrot. “Will you miss me?” she said to the bird.

  Al said, “Where are you going?”

  She put American Beauty on the turntable. “You can make your dreams come true when you accept that I’m not part of them,” she said. It had been four months since they’d made love.

  “Will you come home before the school year begins? Are you quitting your job?”

  Ché hopped onto the coffee table. Al snatched his journal before the bird could leave droppings on it.

  Robb, a friend at the bank, had said, “You’re stymied, afraid you’ll make things worse. When she insults you, write it down. When you show her, she’ll beg for forgiveness.”

  He opened to a page to read something she’d said: you don’t have to be Einstein to have a backbone.

  Now was the time to show her how she’d undermined him. But what would she think of him writing it all down? Al the schlub, making notes. He said, “I’ll leave.”

  “And I should stay here?” She opened the bathroom door. “This place is a pigsty.” A puddle pooled around a bath towel on the floor carelessly left on the bathroom floor.

  The kitchen gleamed, the doors and window frames he’d recently dusted were vibrant in high-glass pastel tones, the Birds-of-Paradise-and-palmetto-fronds pattern in the percale that covered the throw pillows and sofa matched the curtains. The crystal she’d selected for her bridal registry sparkled in a display case.

  “That’s your towel,” he said.

  She walked out, the front door closing behind her with a whoosh, as if blowing him a kiss.

  He wanted to yell, I’ll police the floors for towels. But on the porch he froze in a paralysis that had first gripped him in childhood, riding a carousel pony, his world spinning round and round beyond control like the events of his life— his father killed on the deck of an aircraft carrier; poor grades disqualifying him from playing football his senior year in high school; a hand grenade that was supposed to be disarmed exploding during a training exercise, mortally wounding Andy, who died in his arms; and now this, Hailey passing from his life like a dying breath.

  He wanted to rush off the porch yelling, Hailey, Hailey! But he was as stiff as one of the brightly painted wooden carousel ponies.

  He opens his eyes. Hailey is reading to him from Goethe’s Faust, the first words of Mephistopheles in the play – “Lie there, poor wretched, seduced you come/To bonds of love that brook no treason. /The man whom Helen has struck dumb/Gropes long ere he regains his reason.”

  He has no idea what these words mean. Who is Faust? Goethe? Helen?

  Hailey puts the book down and says, “Hundreds of people who trusted you are going to lose everything. You’ve got to help.”

  He’s misjudged his wife. She’d driven modest cars, worn off-the-rack department store clothing. She didn’t have to work but she loved teaching high school English, which had never been a subject he enjoyed.

  Loving her more than ever, he blinks twice. He’ll divulge nothing.

  Her hand on his forehead is spring rain. His eyes close.

  A month after Hailey had left Al for a destination unknown, in Coral Gables he and his boss, Robb, strolled past beds of begonias and box hedges lining the outer boundaries of the sidewalks along Miracle Mile— a broad street with upscale art galleries, boutiques, live-performance theaters, two lanes of traffic in either direction, a center divider planted with palmettos, sago and fan palms. They were on their way to lunch at Zadie’s Deli. It was the time of day Robb usually consoled Al about his marriage.

  “Have you heard from Hailey?” Robb said.

  “No,” Al said. “Not yet.” His athletic build towered over Robb’s pudgy frame. Robb was short of breath, so Al stopped to look in a jewelry store window to give Robb a moment to rest.

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong,” Robb said. “That’s not what she wants.” He rested. Then they walked on. “Well, as I was saying, Geraldine Ferraro? What was Mondale thinking?”

  “That he wanted the women’s vote?” Al said.

  “You see? That’s one of your problems,” Robb said. “You don’t understand human nature. Ronald Reagan, he understood human nature. That’s why he carried the women’s vote by a landslide.”

  Al said, “I told Hailey that voting Democrat—”

  “Democratic,” Robb said.

  “Maybe that’s why she left
me. Politics.” Al said.

  “As usual, you’re missing the point,” Robb said. “Women are by nature jealous and distrustful of other women. It’s how they’re wired. A woman needs a strong man with his hands on the controls. Oh, I know, you’ve got the fringe elements like Betty Friedan. But the lesbian vote doesn’t swing elections.”

  Al said, “But Hailey didn’t vote for Reagan.”

  “If you give her jewelry,” Robb said, “it will make you look weak.”

  They stepped into the deli and Rob nodded to a stout redhead, who wore pastel muumuu. “Hey, Zadie,” he said.

  “Hey yourself, Robb. I got that booth in the back.”

  As Zadie led Robb and Al past crowded tables, a lanky man in a herringbone sharkskin thousand-dollar suit grabbed Al’s hand, rose from the table where he’d been sitting, and they embraced. Wavy blond hair parted in the middle, cresting above a high forehead, fell to the shirt collar of his old friend Ryan Hunter.

  A short Latino, his forearm tattooed with a rose, and two Asian men stood.

  After introductions, Ryan’s gaze dropped, his voice cracked. “Andy—”

  Silence. Then Ryan said, “When I visited Coach Ross and Andy’s mom, they told me you’re working for First American.” He handed Al his business card. “Call me. We’re not happy with our bank.”

  When they were seated, Robb said, “You know Ryan Hunter how?”

  “High school friends. Kermit Ross was our football coach.”

  “Kermit Ross? The janitor? He was a high school teacher?”

  “He’s not a janitor. He’s our chief engineer, works in corporate, supervises dozens of other guys. He quit teaching high school after Andy was killed. He couldn’t— he couldn’t be around kids who were Andy’s age all the time.”

  “Really? I didn’t know we had a Negro in corporate. I’ve never seen him in a suit.”

  “He wears a suit every day,” Al said. Robb shook his head in disbelief. “When I got out of the navy,” Al said, “Kermit got me my job at First American.”

  Robb slathered rye bread with two pats of butter. “What are you having?”

  “Do I have the promotion?” Al said.

  “Well,” Robb said, clearing his throat, “I went to bat for you, but I struck out.”

  Shit. Was it better not having to tell Hailey of yet another failure than to bear the disappointment alone? He could hear her father scolding her: “A putz! You could have married a mensch. But no, you had to marry a putz.”

  “So, who’s my new branch manager?”

  “Let’s talk big picture—”

  “My career is a big picture.” Al said.

  “Ted Court.”

  “Ted Court?”

  Robb put a hand on Al’s arm. “Shush,” he said.

  “Ted’s been with the bank what, six months?” Al said. “How old is he?”

  Robb ate the bread, then buttered another slice.

  “Behind my back,” Al said, “that insubordinate rat said I was the dullest bulb in the chandelier. I told you about that and now you’re making him my boss?”

  Robb said, “It wasn’t my decision. Al, as your friend, I must advise you to see Ted’s promotion for what it is. You’ve found your niche . . .”

  Al lost the thread of Robb’s advice, watching an animated conversation at Ryan’s table. The Latino, in his early thirties, pumped a clenched fist in short emphatic strokes as he spoke. The Asian men, in their fifties, sat impassively, one with his hands folded in his lap, the other with his palms on the table. When the man with the rose tattoo stopped speaking, the Asian men remained stoic, without expression, saying nothing. The Latino rose from his seat and leaned across the table until he was almost nose to nose with one of the Asian men. The man blanched. Ryan placed his large hand on the short man’s shoulder, easing him back into his seat.

  He opens his eyes. In his hospital room, Aurora playfully tugs his toes. He sees her doing it, but for all he feels, she could be tugging on the cord that closes the drapes.

  After Hailey left him, Aurora became his confidant. When he’d told her Robb’s theory of women, she’d said, “I’d bet the bank he’d want my hands on his controls.” She’d also said, “I’ve told Hailey that she’s being a fool.”

  Sweat drips from his forehead. Aurora dries his face, then shows him a photograph of a man, a tattoo of a cobra on his forearm. “Efrím Escante. You know him?” she says.

  Al blinks twice.

  She shows Al a photo of a million dollar check payable to Escante Petroleum issued by First Global Bank in Jakarta. The head of the cobra tattooed on the Latino’s forearm had been a rose. Al’s eyes close.

  Walking to the bank from the deli, Robb said, “Take me with you when you see Ryan Hunter.”

  “He doesn’t know you.”

  “You won’t land the account on your own.”

  “Why not?”

  “What’s Hunter’s business?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Trading futures in precious metals,” Robb said. “What’s the name of the federal agency that regulates commodities? What would trigger the bank’s obligation to honor one of his letters of credit? What kind of collateral would the bank want for the credit he needs? The bank won’t share his risk. So how do you tell him that without pissing him off?”

  All Al saw was gridlock, all he heard was traffic, all he could breathe was exhaust.

  He opens his eyes. Aurora says, “We’ll protect Jacob and Hailey.”

  She knows his family’s been threatened, but she doesn’t care. Not about him. Not about Hailey and Jacob. What does Aurora care about? Who does she care about? He’s known her since childhood. She’s never married, never even had a boyfriend for very long. And then it comes to him. He knows, but he’s never seen it before. She doesn’t care about love. Her passion is vengeance. That’s what motivates her, has always motivated her. Well, he’ll have no part of it. He’s above revenge. Especially now, considering the stakes. He closes his eyes.

  In September, shortly before the beginning of the Fall semester Hailey called Al, leaving him a message saying she was back and wanted her things. A few days later, she let herself into the apartment. “Where’s Ché?” she said.

  Ché squawked. “What’s for dinner?”

  A trim woman in a fashionably short skirt and sheer lavender blouse over a lilac-lace-pushup bra introduced herself. “Bonnie Morris, Keyes Realty.”

  Hailey said, “A pleasure,” taking the woman’s outstretched hand.

  The realtor said, “Your husband has exquisite taste. He’s selected a fabulous on Biscayne Bay.”

  Hailey took Al by the arm. “Please excuse us.”

  The clutter of accessories she’d left strewn throughout their bedroom was gone. Cosmetics she’d left in disarray were arranged neatly on her vanity. The bed was made, the bathroom immaculate.

  She brushed a lock of hair from his forehead. “You look different.”

  “Is that a criticism?”

  “Au contraire.”

  “Meaning?”

  “What is that woman talking about? A foreclosure? Why isn’t she meeting you at the bank?”

  “What’s that have to do with how I look?”

  “Her outfit is shameful.”

  “Did you go to California? Did you see Bohem?”

  “Did you get a new job?”

  “I’m promoted. You never believed in me.”

  “I married a decorated military hero, like his father, like my father. You’re still my hero. But I’m angry with you for taking abuse from Robb and those other vultures at the bank. They don’t deserve you.” She sat on the bed.

  He sat on the bench by her vanity, facing her. “I’m vice president for international operations.”

  They said nothing else until papers rustled in the living room.

  “Want to look at the house with me?” he said.

  “Will you pick up your towels?” He sputtered. She laughed and took his hand.


  He opens his eyes, hoping Aurora has left his hospital room. She stands by his bed, still holding the photo of the million-dollar check. “Do you know about this?” she says. He closes his eyes.

  Despite Robb badgering him daily, Al didn’t call Ryan, but Ryan had finally called him, turning his weed-patch career at First American into an oil patch.

  A month after Hailey had left him, Al stood before an art deco low-rise with a pink marble façade on Galliano Street in Coral Gables wearing a tie with a birthday-cake, party-hat, and lit-sparkler design. Granite lettering on the building said, Orion trading. When he walked in, the receptionist said, “Happy birthday, Mr. Rosen.”

  “Thank you, Jenni,” he said, self-aware but without a hint of understanding How did you know?”

  “Mr. Hunter said to send you right up.”

  He walked past traders yelling into telephones and back and forth at one another, waving scraps of paper. A man with a pasty complexion grimaced and drew a finger across his throat, making Al wonder how the traders survived day to day without suffering heart failure. He bypassed the elevator and bounded up the stairs.

  Ryan’s office was a modern affair: plush white carpets, cabinets and credenzas lacquered black. In a high-back, plush leather executive chair, he sat behind an oval desk of glass and chrome. He stood, gesturing for Al to sit in one of the client chairs on the other side of his desk.

  The frames of the client chairs were thin chrome tubes. The backs, which came to the bottom of Al’s shoulder blades, and seats, which angled downward front to back on a forty-five-degree slope, were made of hard black leather stretched taut across the frame. His butt hung over the back of the seat a foot from the floor. He was unable to find a comfortable position for his long legs. When he leaned against the backrest, he had the sensation of sitting on a rollercoaster during a steep ascent.

  “You like the chairs?” Ryan said. “I just got them.”