Too Far

by Jason Starr

  ‘My son’s into Pokémon too,’ Rob said. ‘Big Golisopod fan – huge. See, I’m a good dad, I keep up with this shit.’ Then, after taking a long sip of his gimlet, Rob asked, ‘So how’re the mothers at the school? Any hot ones?’

  Rob may have been forty-four, but his brain age was sixteen.

  ‘I’m just curious,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you worried about your wife finding out?’

  ‘Finding out?’

  ‘You know, about your… lifestyle. Aren’t you worried about your life turning into a huge train wreck?’

  He made a face like I’d suggested something ridiculous, some impossibility.

  Then he said, ‘Come on, I told you, I’m not a moron. That’s who gets caught – the dummies. I’m not gonna have some obsessed woman calling the house, I’m not gonna rub it in my wife’s face. I have my life at home and I have my other life and I never let the two lives meet.’

  The way he was talking to me about it so openly – and loudly – I doubted he was very careful.

  ‘Don’t you feel guilty?’ I asked.

  ‘You kidding?’ he said. ‘Cheating saved my marriage. If I didn’t cheat, Julianne and I would’ve gotten divorced years ago. When my youngest was a year old and she went through this whole crisis and shit with her father dying, we would’ve split for sure. A lot of guys in my position, would have taken off. But I’m a good father, a good husband too. Thank God that I was fooling around, that I had that outlet.’

  I could practically hear Oprah’s audience booing.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ I said. ‘I think I’d go crazy if I had to live my life that way. I mean with all the lying and deceit.’

  ‘You get used to it,’ he said casually.

  He flagged down our waitress and ordered another gimlet. I didn’t think it was the most tactful thing in the world, to get drunk while having lunch with an old friend who was a recovering alcoholic. But, then again, tactfulness had never been Rob’s strong point.

  ‘Okay, lemme ask you a question,’ Rob said. ‘You happily married?’

  Maria and I hadn’t had sex in four and a half years.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You hesitated.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘I was watching,’ he said. ‘I could’ve counted to three before you answered. Okay, maybe two, but it’s okay. Admitting you have a problem is a process – look who I’m talking to. You know how it is. You’re still in the denial stage right now. There’s no shame in that.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I feel so much better about myself now.’

  The sarcasm soared over his head.

  Smiling with one side of his mouth, like a parody of a used car salesman, he said, ‘Okay Mr Happily Married Man Who’s Never Cheated. What about fantasizing? Have you ever fantasized about another woman?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I mean everybody has fantasies. But that doesn’t mean –’

  ‘I used to fantasize,’ he said. ‘And I’m not just talking about turning around to check out a pretty girl on a hot summer day. My fantasizing went deep. It was vivid, all the time. That’s when you get to the next step – making the fantasies real. You start flirting more, you notice female attention and you start to seek it out. You know what I never understood? I never understood why some guys have a crisis when they hit forty. When you’re in your forties and fifties and you’re a man, with Viagra, Levitra, that’s like the golden age for getting laid.’

  I smiled. Rob’s skewed logic was ridiculous, but amusing.

  ‘Okay,’ I asked, ‘so where do you meet your… I don’t know what you call them… girlfriends?’

  ‘Online mostly,’ he said. ‘You know, the extramarital dating websites.’

  ‘You’re kidding me. You really do that?’

  ‘That used to be my attitude,’ he said, ‘until I tried it. What do you think I do, meet women at work so I can wind up in a Me Too, trending on Twitter? I like taking risks when I’m ziplining, not when I’m trying to get laid. Online is the safest way to cheat, and these cheating sites are the best thing for married men since Monday Night Football. One I go to most is D-Ho, short for Discreet Hookups. Go on D-Ho your first time it seems lame. A lot of the guys are catfishing and the women are smart enough not to bite. But eventually, you get to know the women and start emailing, IM’ing, sending virtual flowers. Corny, I know, but I’m tellin’ ya, the shit works. So far I’ve met eleven women and got laid eight times. Not a bad percentage, right?’

  ‘Aren’t you worried about hackers stealing your credit card info?’ I asked. ‘Making the client list public?’

  ‘If an alligator bites off a golfer’s hand, do you quit playing golf?’

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

  ‘Syphilis, AIDS, herpes, pregnancy – sex has always been risky,’ Rob said, ‘but people still do it. You should see the one I’m meeting tonight. Married, two kids, sexy as hell. I hope she looks like she does in her pics.’

  He held up his phone, showing me a photo of a very attractive woman, probably in her mid-thirties. She was smiling, holding a drink, looked like she was at an office party.

  ‘What can I say?’ I said. ‘Looks like you’ve got it all figured out.’

  He squinted, as if trying to solve a complicated problem, then said, ‘I’m sensing jealousy, Jack. Is that what this is all about? Your music career didn’t go the way you wanted it to go, you quit drinking, you have no excitement in your life now, so you wish you were playing with your old buddy Rob on the other side of the tracks. Am I right or am I right?’

  He wasn’t one hundred percent off-base, but I said, ‘No, I’m just curious. So what do you do, just meet these women to have sex?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘we meet to fuck. I mean, like tonight, we’re meeting at my hotel bar, but I doubt we’ll get through the first drink. Oh, man, I should show you some of the texts she’s been sending me. She’s so raunchy and nasty, I love it.’

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you that she’s cheating on her husband? That she has kids?’

  ‘Not my business.’

  ‘What if her husband finds out and they wind up getting divorced?’

  ‘She’s an adult, she can make her own decisions.’

  I laughed.

  ‘Answer me honestly.’ Not even smiling. ‘If you could cheat on your wife and I guaranteed you there was zero chance of her ever finding out, would you do it?’

  ‘Come on, that’s a ridiculous –’

  ‘In other words, yes.’

  ‘I didn’t say –’

  ‘Any guy would,’ he said. ‘And you’d be surprised, most women would, too. And if you’re gonna tell me you’d never cheat, it’s wrong, it’s amoral – you’re full of shit. Because what’s the alternative? You don’t cheat? You have the same dull, routine sex with the same woman for the rest of your life? I mean, like I said, I love my wife, don’t get me wrong. I wanna grow old with her and spoon-feed mashed prunes to her at the nursing home when we’re ninety, but when you think about it you have to be crazy not to cheat. I mean, like they say, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, and I say, Why not be damned and get laid?’

  Our lunches arrived. While we ate, I managed to steer our conversation away from extramarital sex onto other subjects. Mostly, we talked about people we knew from back when we lived together. I’d stayed in touch with a few whom Rob hadn’t, so I caught him up on what they were doing now.

  By the end of the meal we were both straining for topics to talk about, and it was a relief when the check came. I suggested splitting it, but he insisted on paying.

  ‘Compliments of Music Mania,’ he said.

  Leaving the restaurant, he immediately put on his mirrored Aviators, even though it was overcast and drizzling.

/>   ‘So have a think about the apartment and let me know where your head is at,’ I said. ‘I think you’d love it there, I really do, and if you want to make an offer and close fast, I’ll get right on it.’

  I could tell he wasn’t listening.

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ he said, staring at his cell. ‘Fuck, it’s late. Gotta hit a meeting, then it’s back to my hotel to rest up for my big date tonight. I’m not expecting to get much sleep.’ He looked at me. ‘You’re so jealous right now. Deny it all you want, but you can’t hide it.’

  We hugged, slapping each other’s backs, and then walked away in opposite directions.

  3

  I knew my one thirty was going to be a bust the second I saw Larry Stein. On the phone he’d sounded older – I’d assumed forty – but he was in his late twenties, thirty tops. Worse, he’d sounded like a serious buyer on the phone, said he was currently renting, worked on Wall Street, and was looking for a large one-bedroom convertible to two or a small two-bedroom ‘in the million range.’ In person, he was in a cheap suit and was wearing an imitation Rolex that he’d probably bought on the street for ten bucks.

  I screened him in my office, or tried to anyway. I asked him more about his career and background, and that was when he mentioned, in passing, that he was the assistant manager of a luggage store on Wall Street. Apparently he’d meant ‘I work on Wall Street’ literally. I asked him if he had another source of income, and he said he had ‘other assets.’

  I was skeptical – he seemed like a ballbuster, the type of guy who went to open houses on weekends ‘just for fun’ – but I showed him the apartment on Ninetieth anyway. He had non-stop questions: How are the building’s finances? How’s the co-op board? How’re the doormen? Is heat included in the maintenance? After we had spent about twenty minutes in the apartment – he must’ve gone in and out of the bathroom six times – he asked, ‘So what would my monthly expenses be?’

  ‘Assuming you put twenty percent down, about thirty-six hundred a month.’

  ‘Why so much?’ he asked.

  Thinking, Um, maybe because it’s a million-dollar apartment, I feigned patience and said, ‘Well, with a sixteen hundred dollar maintenance that’s just the way the numbers crunch.’

  ‘That’s way out of my range,’ he said.

  After a deep breath I asked, ‘Would you like to see some less expensive apartments?’

  ‘Don’t have time today,’ he said, ‘but I’ll reach out to you next week sometime.’

  I knew I’d never hear from him again.

  Walking back downtown along Third Avenue, I texted Rob McEvoy: So cool seeing you today, man! Great to catch up and if you have any more questions about the apartment just gimme a shout!

  Rob was my hottest prospect right now. Well, let’s face it – my only prospect, and, worse, I needed the sale desperately. Commission on a two-million-dollar apartment was $120,000. In this case, I’d have to split the commission with another broker and my company got a cut as well, but after taxes my share would still make up practically all of my income for the entire year.

  If I didn’t close the sale… well, I didn’t even want to think about that.

  A text from Rob arrived: I will… and I will !!!!!

  Okay, I’ll admit it – I was jealous of Rob. Not of his philandering – of his career. He was an asshole, yeah, but he was making money, working in the music business. Before I got married, I’d been a studio guitarist, and sometimes I toured with bands around the country and, once, Europe. My pay was erratic – I was often broke and living on friends’ couches – but I was a damn good guitarist and it had been the happiest time of my life.

  I missed having a career that I loved.

  * * *

  In the courtyard of P.S.158, a massive prewar elementary school on York Avenue, I waited with the other parents for Jonah’s class to arrive.

  This was always the highlight of my day. Because Maria had a full-time job in public relations at a midtown financial services company and my hours were flexible, I could do all of the pickups and drop-offs, rather than hiring a babysitter like a lot of Manhattan parents did. It might’ve been an annoying situation for some guys, but time with Jonah always felt like time with my best friend. I went on all of his class trips, was his reading and math buddy every other Friday, and took him to the major school events such as tie-dying day, the walkathon, dance night, and the Halloween Boo Bash.

  A seemingly endless stream of shrieking, energetic kids exited the school, but Jonah’s class was late. Upper East Siders could be as cliquey as their kids, and parents congregated in their usual groups. There were cliques of working moms, yoga moms, SoulCycle moms, PTA moms, grandmothers, stay-at-home dads, and babysitters. In the morning there was the clique of ‘dads in suits’ – uppity pricks, who seemed to all know each other from somewhere, who always seemed to be dropping references to their ‘firms’ and ‘mergers’ and ‘buyouts.’ If I were more business savvy, I could’ve used the pickups and drop-offs as an opportunity to schmooze – the way some people schmoozed at the AA meetings I attended. I could’ve injected myself into every conversation and handed out business cards, saying, ‘Hey, if you know anybody who’s looking for an apartment, gimme a shout,’ but it wasn’t my style to kiss ass.

  Standing around, I ended up on the periphery of a conversation between Stacy Katz and Geri Sherman from the PTA clique. I didn’t say anything, just smiled and nodded once in a while. They were talking about the curriculum and an upcoming class trip to the South Street Seaport.

  I’d never really thought about Stacy and Geri in a sexual way. I mean, I’d noticed they were attractive, but I hadn’t actually thought about it. But now I couldn’t help hearing Rob in my head – You should see the moms at my daughter’s school. If Rob were here he’d definitely hit on Geri. She was a good-looking, petite brunette in her early forties, and she was in the midst of a divorce. From a dad, I’d heard that she’d cheated on her soon-to-be ex – i.e. just Rob’s type.

  I glanced around, wondering what other moms Rob would hit on. Karen Schaeffer, one of the SoulCycle moms, was happily married, but that wouldn’t deter Rob; he’d consider her a challenge. Or maybe he’d go after one of the yoga moms – Kirstin Lasher or Jenny Liang or Danielle Freidman – oh, yeah, definitely Danielle. She was married to a workaholic neurosurgeon and had been the subject of affair rumors since Jonah was in kindergarten. She was in her late thirties but still looked great. Typical Danielle outfit – tight jeans, high-heeled boots, and a low-cut top showing lots of pushed-up cleavage. Recently she’d been having a lot of play dates with Greg Langley, a stay-at-home dad who, I’d heard, was in marriage counseling with his wife, so it wasn’t hard to imagine that there was some real dating going on there as well.

  Although I knew that Rob’s idea that everyone cheats on their spouse at some point was ridiculous, I’d read that something like seventy percent of all married people cheat at some point. If that were true, it meant there had to be a lot of illicit relationships going on with the parents at the school – ones I hadn’t heard anything about.

  ‘Hi, Daddy.’

  I looked down and saw Jonah standing there in front of me. I’d been so distracted by my thoughts that I hadn’t noticed his class come out.

  ‘Hey, kiddo,’ I said, kissing him on top of his head. He had shaggy light-brown hair, but it would probably turn darker eventually because Maria and I had dark hair. ‘How was school today?’

  ‘Okay, can we get ice cream?’

  ‘Nope, no ice cream. You’ve had ice cream two days in a row.’

  ‘Come on, Dad, please.’

  ‘You can have a healthy snack at home,’ I said, ‘and then how about we go to the park and play some basketball? Sound cool?’

  ‘Sounds cool,’ he said, and we high-fived.

  * * *

  Later, after basketball and ice
cream – yeah, I caved – we arrived at our apartment building – a modest, yet well-maintained postwar doorman building on Eighty-third between First and York. Unfortunately we were renting – we couldn’t afford to buy – because owning on the Upper East Side would have been a great investment. Now that the Second Avenue Subway had finally opened, demand in the neighborhood had been skyrocketing, thanks mainly to an influx of hipsters from overpriced Williamsburg. Trendy restaurants and bars, many with live music and even burlesque, had opened throughout the neighborhood, and recently I’d passed a couple of new vegan cafes – always a surefire sign that a neighborhood was taking off.

  Our apartment could’ve been marketed as a ‘junior four,’ but it was actually an average-size one-bedroom. Jonah had the bedroom, and we’d put up a wall in the living room alcove/office space to create a second bedroom. It was way too small for three people, but it was all we could afford on Maria’s salary and my commissions. We’d managed for a while, but it’s hard enough for two people to live in a one-bedroom – put a kid in the mix and it’s nearly impossible.

  I was in the living room, helping Jonah with his homework, when Maria entered. She had been away for a few days on a business trip to Houston and she pulled her suitcase into the apartment behind her. She was in a conservative navy dress, her hair back in a tight ponytail.

  ‘Mommy!’ Jonah rushed over to Maria by the door.

  Bending over to hug him, she said, ‘Hello, sweetie, how have you been? I missed you so much.’

  ‘Missed you too,’ he said.

  ‘I want to hear all about everything you’ve been up to. Let me just change out of my work clothes, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Hey,’ Maria said to me.

  She kissed me quickly on the lips then went into the bedroom.

  Our relationship was so different than it had been thirteen years ago. When I met her at one of my gigs downtown she was in a tight leather miniskirt and fishnets and had short, spiky hair and a nose ring. She was alone at the bar.