No Way Back

by Matthew Klein

  Libby was one of those waitresses. She worked at The Goose, a Lantek watering hole. Most of The Goose’s customers hit on her – often giving new meaning to the establishment’s name – and so my own advances, which consisted merely of words, didn’t seem particularly egregious.

  But they were persistent. Relentlessly persistent.

  I asked out the woman who would become my wife four times before she finally agreed to be alone in a room with me.

  The first time I asked Libby out, she told me very calmly to go to hell. I still remember the way she said those words, Go to hell. Even today, I remember. They weren’t angry words, which is what surprised me. They were gentle. She said Go to hell, and she pointed her finger, as if to indicate helpfully which way to start walking.

  The second time I asked Libby out, two days later, she threw her head back, and laughed, as if I had said something hilarious. ‘Very funny, Jimmy!’ she told me, when she recovered. ‘Me and you on a date!’ Then she walked off, laughing still.

  That took a little wind out of my sails, I have to admit, and so I didn’t dare a third attempt until a few months later. It happened during one of those lulls that sometimes hit downtown bars – right after the post-work Happy Hour crowd goes home to their families, leaving behind only the incorrigible drunks. This time, the waitress named Libby Granville ignored my question entirely. She had just brought my fourth scotch of the evening, and had put it on the bar in front of me; and when she leaned over, to lay down the glass, I asked her softly – so softly that no one else could hear – if I could take her away from this place and buy her dinner. She froze in that position, leaning over the bar, wisps of brown hair in her eyes, and she didn’t look up. I still remember that – the way she stood there, motionless – the graceful lithe posture, the tendons in her outstretched arm, the hair in her eyes. There was a moment of frozen indecision. And then, her uncertainty vanished, and she stood up, and walked off, shaking her head, as if reprimanding herself for coming so close to making a terrible choice.

  Finally, on the fourth try – six months after the first attempt – she relented – ‘so that you would finally leave me alone’, she told me later. I ran into her not at the bar, but at the supermarket. She was in the checkout line ahead of me. There’s something sad about a grocery-store express line at eight p.m.; only the loners and the heartbroken use it. We stood there, smiling and embarrassed, clandestinely comparing each other’s purchases, scattered on the neoprene conveyor belt in front of us – for myself, a rotisserie chicken; for her, a pre-made salad – and it was then that we decided to join forces and have the dinner together.

  We were married one year later.

  That was the end of the romance. I worked insane hours, giving myself entirely to my career. I had little time left for Libby. When we had our first child, I had little time left for him. I was always grasping for that next rung on the corporate ladder. From VP of Sales, I jumped to Chief Operating Officer at NetGuard. From there, it was just one more leap to Chief Executive Officer. I got my first CEO job when I was only thirty-eight years old. It was the peak of my career.

  As my career ascended, the rest of my life fell apart. I had always drunk, but somehow managed to control how and when I did it. I was what is referred to as a ‘highly functional drunk’ – which is a term used by people who can’t admit they have a problem. I’d show up to work sober and perform competently – even brilliantly – but as soon as the hands on my Rolex said six o’clock, I knew it was time to leave work and drink. ‘My time,’ I called it, possessively, as if my employer could control me from eight to six, but, after that, it was my right to claim my body and destroy it however I damn pleased. I stayed drunk most nights, sometimes blacking out, which I suppose was a mercy, since at least I forgot most of the sins I committed while loaded.

  Over the years drinking turned into snorting, and snorting into whoring, and whoring into crystal meth. Oh, and there was gambling, too. How that started, I still do not know. My father never gambled, and – until I started using – neither did I. But one day, with a straw in my nose, a whore in my bed, and a Racing Form on my lap, I looked up and realized that the thrill of a new bet made me almost as high as the thrill of a new woman. When you find yourself calling your bookie at two in the morning, laying ten g’s on the coin toss at Ball State, you know you have a problem.

  By the time I made it to CEO, I was out of control – fighting in bars, screwing strangers, gambling everything I earned, losing it and winning it back, owing money to scary men, arriving home high or drunk, hurting Libby in every way I could, short of violence.

  The end came when my son died. Cole was three years old the night he drowned.

  Even after the DA cleared me of his death, Libby did not leave me. To this day, I have no idea why she stayed. Maybe it was because she knew no one else but me. Maybe it was because her father was a drunk, too, and – like so many other people – she could only repeat her past. Or maybe it was exactly what she claims: that she loves me, despite what I did that night.

  After the death of my son, I got clean. I tried turning my life around. I tried rebuilding my career. It took a long time. I made a lot of phone calls in those dark days, begged a lot of people for second chances. I started small, with one-off gigs: consulting for cash-strapped start-ups; rescuing a software company that had fired its VP; serving as an interim CEO for a company whose founder had a heart attack. I worked for stock options – pieces of paper – usually worthless. No one paid me cash. But once I had a little momentum, I starting offering myself as a rent-a-CEO – a ‘turnaround guy’ is what I called myself – and had some success. The farther away from Palo Alto I went, the fewer people knew about my past. My jobs stayed low-profile, my compensation meagre, my progress incremental. But it was progress. A little at a time, I worked my way back.

  Now, standing in the middle of Florida, three thousand miles from our home, our real home, I think I understand why Libby is treating me like a stranger. She started with me when I was high, in every sense of the word, and stuck with me when I was low. She forgave me for the things I did. She nursed me to health. And now, finally, we’re back to where we began. I have a chance to turn around a real company, with real venture-capital investors. This is the biggest opportunity we’ve had in five years. Maybe ever. I can earn ten or eleven million dollars if I succeed.

  Libby probably wonders if I’ll ruin this chance too – the way I’ve ruined everything else in our life.

  ‘Hey,’ I say. I reach out, take her fingers in mine. They stay limp in my hand. ‘Everything is going to be fine. No more mistakes. I promise.’

  She nods. She doesn’t return my stare. Doesn’t look at me.

  She doesn’t believe me, I know.

  Doesn’t believe a fucking word I say.

  She leads me upstairs to the bedroom.

  The bed is neatly made, with a brown duvet pulled tight as a drum head. Libby has always been fastidious – fussing with beds, stacking pantries, scrubbing toilets. Her obsession with neatness and order developed around the same time that I began to spiral so desperately out of control. You don’t have to be Freud to figure that one out.

  The ceiling of the bedroom is high and vaulted. Above the bed is a ceiling fan with oversized teak blades, like something out of post-war Havana. It twirls slowly, squeaking on each turn. Near the bed is a window, and just beyond it, outside, the giant live oak, its branches touching the glass. There’s a sliding door that leads out to a little veranda overlooking the backyard pool.

  ‘What do you think?’ she asks.

  ‘Little bit Cuba, little bit Shangri-La.’

  I go to the bureau and pull a drawer at random. Libby has unpacked for me. Undershirts and socks sit in neat square piles, exactly fourteen days’ worth. Before we left Palo Alto, we agreed to bring only the barest minimum with us to Florida, just a few clothes and knick-knacks. We would leave the rest of our lives behind, in our real house, awaiting our return. Our triump
hant return, we hoped.

  On top of the bureau, Libby has arranged three photographs in metal frames. One is of me, much younger, standing on a boardwalk, my hands in my pockets, staring at the photographer with a surly sneer. Like James Dean on crystal meth.

  The second photo is of Libby, sunlight dappling her face, standing alone in a forest.

  The final photo shows the two of us together, sitting on a couch. Neither of us smiles.

  The paltry selection makes me sad. Libby must have made an effort to choose ‘highlights’ from our years together – but so much of our past is off limits now, so much forbidden – that this is the best she can do: three desultory shots – all out of focus, and all with that queer Beirut-hostage quality of pictures snapped against the subjects’ will. What does it say about a marriage, when, after a decade, there is only one photo of husband and wife in the same frame?

  I stare at that one, that photo of me and Libby on the couch together. We’re in a stylish loft, in front of an exposed brick wall. Behind us hangs an art deco poster – a wine advertisement, from 1920s Italy. It says ‘Vini di Lusso’ and shows a grotesque red satyr, with curved horns and a hooked nose, hungrily gobbling a bunch of grapes. In the photograph, Libby and I stare at the camera, creepily oblivious to the creature behind us. My arm is wrapped around Libby, but now – in hindsight – it looks as if she’s shrinking from my touch.

  I remember the night that photo was taken. It was seven years ago. We were in San Francisco. The condo was owned by my friend, Bob Parker, and it was his New Year’s Eve party. Bob was a buddy from Lantek, one of my best friends at the time – but also one of the friends who disappeared after the death of my son, either too embarrassed to know me, or too suspicious of what happened that night.

  The evening the picture was taken, I was a walking disaster: aware, hazily, that I had a problem; but still drinking, still gambling, still getting high. At the end of the night, Libby dutifully escorted me home, but not before I had made a drunken pass at Bob Parker’s wife while she leaned over and served me canapés.

  Now, in our bedroom, Libby comes up behind me, takes the photograph from my hand, and lays it back on the dresser. ‘I wanted one of us together,’ she says, as if to explain why she chose one that brings back bad memories.

  I turn. She’s standing very close to me. I feel her breasts against my chest. She smells of sweat, and peat, and talcum powder. A line of dirt is smudged on her face. I lick my finger and wipe it across her cheek. The smudge disappears. I feel the stir of an erection.

  ‘How’s the bed?’ I ask.

  ‘Soft.’

  ‘Want to break it in?’

  I look past her, out of the window, past the oak tree, and I’m surprised that the sky is dark. The first drops of rain fall.

  We make love. Until we start, I think it’s going to be quick and animal – tearing off her clothes, throwing her down, pounding into each other after seven days of abstinence. But it’s not like that at all. We stand at the foot of the bed. She undresses me slowly, one shirt button at a time. She unzips my pants, unfastens my belt. She drops my clothes to the floor. I slide the straps of her sundress from her shoulders, let the fabric fall. We remove our underwear, stand naked in front of each other, in the chill of the air-conditioned room. Without words, we step to the bed.

  We lie on our sides, face each other. We stroke each other’s skin. I run the back of my hand over her abdomen, her nipples, her pubic hair.

  She pulls my fingers to her face. She kisses each finger, starting at my thumb. When she gets to the pinky, she puts it in her mouth, sucks on it. She takes it from her lips, stares at it.

  Now might be a good time to mention that, on my left hand, I’m missing the first two segments of my pinky. It happened eight years ago, due either to a slammed car door one drunken night, or an angry bookie named Hector Gonzales. In either case, I blacked out, and don’t remember exactly what happened. Libby tells the story this way: that I arrived home one morning at three o’clock, with a dish towel wrapped around the stump of my finger. But rather than remark upon my curiously missing digit, I complained that I was starving, and needed to find a good hamburger. To lure me into the car, she lied and told me she would take me to Jack in the Box, but she took me to the emergency room, instead.

  Now, she grabs my half-pinky, brings it down between her legs, strokes her pussy with it. She closes her eyes, shivers.

  I leave my mangled hand limp, let her manipulate it. She moves it faster, finds a rhythm that’s familiar to me. In another minute her body shudders. She gasps. Her orgasm sounds like a surprise – the noise a woman makes when she’s been told someone has died.

  After she comes, she closes her eyes. She keeps my half-pinky inside her. Another minute, and I climb on top of her, slide inside. We fuck slowly. She keeps her eyes shut.

  Outside, the rain falls. A crack of thunder rolls off the ocean.

  I pump faster, keeping rhythm with the rain tapping the window. Libby is barely moving, I realize, too late. Probably wants me to come already, and climb off.

  I do. I give a little grunt, let her know I’m done.

  I stay on top of her for a moment, because it’s unseemly to dismount too fast, like a gymnast from a pommel horse. After a ten-count, I roll off. Libby is staring up at the teak ceiling fan, which is rotating slowly, squeaking.

  ‘I missed you, Libby,’ I say.

  ‘Now you have me,’ she says.

  I cannot tell if these words are plain and sweet, or if there is bitterness underneath. I kiss her lips, roll off the bed, and pad to the bathroom.

  When I return, she’s under the covers, with her back to me. Outside the rain has slowed. Thunder sounds – muffled, distant. The storm is leaving.

  I look at Libby’s shape under the covers. It’s moving strangely, shaking.

  ‘Libby?’ I say. ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘No.’

  But she is. I walk to the foot of the bed. I reach down, touch her calf through the sheet. She turns with a start. Her eyes are tear-streaked.

  ‘What’s wrong, baby?’ I say.

  She shakes her head. ‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says again.

  ‘You’re not happy we came here.’

  ‘I am happy,’ she says dully. She sniffles.

  ‘I’ll make it worth your while,’ I say, but immediately regret it. It sounds like something you say to a whore. I try again. ‘What I mean to say is... ’ I take a breath. What do I mean to say? ‘Libby, this is a big deal for me. This is my chance.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  ‘It’s not easy for you. I understand that. I’m grateful you came with me. I’m grateful you’re still here, after everything that I’ve... ’ I stop. ‘Everything that happened.’

  She says: ‘I love you, Jimmy.’

  Those are the right words. I’m glad she says them. But there is something odd about her tone. Her words don’t sound like love at all; they sound like lines from a script that she is being forced to read.

  My cellphone rings.

  I’m relieved by the jarring sound. It gives me a chance to leave her, a chance to walk away without speaking any more, without hurting her, without being forced to remember the things that I’ve done.

  CHAPTER 5

  I retrieve my cellphone from my pants, which are crumpled in a ball on the floor. I answer on the third ring. I leave the room, pressing the phone to my ear.

  ‘This is Jim,’ I say.

  ‘How’s it going, hotshot?’

  It’s Tad Billups. He’s my oldest friend. Probably my only friend, come to think of it. The rest gave up on me. Somehow, preposterously, Tad not only stuck with me; he also gave me this job at Tao. Which makes him more than my friend. He’s also my boss.

  With the phone under my chin, I pull the door closed behind me, so that I don’t disturb Libby. I walk down the hall. ‘How’s it going?’ I repeat. ‘It’s going to
hell, Tad. It’s a crappy company, with crappy people, and a crappy product that no one wants to buy. And it’s burning a million dollars a month. And there’s only seven weeks of cash left.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I probably should have mentioned all that, before offering you the job. Any good restaurants down there?’

  ‘Restaurants? How would I know?’ I pad down the stairs. ‘Remind me again. How did you convince me to come here?’

  ‘I didn’t convince you. You convinced me. You begged. You were desperate.’

  ‘Hardly,’ I say. But his banter, meant in fun, cuts close to the bone. The afternoon that I tracked him down in Il Fornaio, I was a bit desperate.

  No.

  Desperate suggests more dignity than I actually had. Pathetic might be a better word.

  He changes the subject. ‘How’s Libby?’

  I lower my voice. ‘Sullen, angry.’

  ‘Well,’ he says brightly. ‘Sounds like everything’s coming up roses.’

  ‘Oh, and also, it’s one hundred degrees.’

  ‘Yeah, I should have warned you about that, too. Florida gets kind of... what’s the word they use down there? Muggy.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning.’

  ‘Let me guess. You wore a suit to the office today, didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I lie.

  ‘No one in Florida wears a suit, Jimmy. How many of them did you pack?’

  ‘I didn’t bring any suits, Tad.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Three. All wool.’

  Tad makes a tsk-tsk sound. ‘Is there any hope whatsoever?’

  ‘They say it cools down in December.’

  ‘I mean for the company, Jimmy.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Give me a couple of days to poke around, see what I can find.’ I work my way into the living room, go to the sliding glass door. I peer outside, to the patio. The rain has stopped. The swimming pool is placid and clear.